Flock of Vandals
by Progman
Summary: Nine months before the geth attacked Eden Prime, Shepard was dishonorably discharged for assaulting a superior officer. Soon after, she established a working partnership with Zaeed Massani, and the duo proved to be the most effective mercenaries in the Terminus. But when a chance encounter with a certain asari spectre turns violent, everything goes straight to hell. AU.
1. Property Damage

**A/N: ****I'm back! Well, I never truly left. ****It's just that over the past seven months, nothing I wrote was up to my standard of quality or depth to publish for you fine guys and gals. If you're curious, I've outlined what the issue was, and the fate of my "Storming Heaven" anthology, in my profile. **

**For those of you who stuck around, thanks for your patience :)**

**I've been bouncing this idea around for quite some time, but never thought I'd have the balls to write it. It's an AU thanks to one tiny change, and the butterfly effect did the rest. ****This will not follow canon, and will most likely not venture back towards it. That said, I'm excited to write this all out, as I'm in it for the long haul. I don't have self-imposed canonical limitations anymore, which is liberating and exhilarating. Rest assured, it will still keep to the heart of what Mass Effect is, and I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I've enjoyed writing it :)**

**Super Special Thanks to LogicalPremise, the brilliant author of "Of Sheep and Battle Chicken" (a fic every Mass Effect fan should read) for smacking my head into so fast a spin that it jump-started my muse like a bolt of lightening. If you haven't checked his stuff out already, you really, really should. **

******As always, this chapter was beta'd by the stupidly talented and insightful BSG-Legacy. Without him, I wouldn't be half the writer I am today. Every kind word you've given me so far has also been to him.**

**DISCLAIMER: This is not part of "Storming Heaven", and as such, this Shepard is her own entirely separate person.**

-(|)-

The pirate queen of Omega's master bedroom was a hot mess of tangled sheets, burnt out candles, discarded clothing that could be anyone's, and quite a bit of rope hanging over the furniture. It was dark, spacious, and lavish, all of the light coming from the wall sized windows overlooking the murky brown cityscape of the station.

Shepard sighed as their shallow bond melted away, leaving her light and boneless. She ran her fingers through her short black hair, now thick with sweat, and slowly sat up on the bed. Shepard stole a few cheeky glances at Aria's bare form, only to have them returned with a flicker of disdain in the asari's eyes.

"If you keep getting caught up in the 'afterglow', Shepard, I'm not going to invite you over anymore." Aria turned away, now very disinterested with the human. "You did your job, admirably, so go get dressed and be on your way."

"Charming." Shepard crooked her lips to the side, frustrated that she had indeed let the rush of endorphins wash over her a bit more powerfully than usual. "The least you could do is not treat me like some common whore, Aria."

"Adorable." Aria chuckled into a loud laugh at that. The asari grabbed Shepard's head violently, and twisted her around to face her. "Tell me, why do you think I should do that, hm? What possible reason could be floating around in that big head of yours?"

Shepard felt her heartbeat skyrocket and she froze in place, not wanting to give the other woman any reason to easily snap her neck. "...because I don't take payment. I'm not a prostitute. You call me, I come. No questions asked."

"Wrong." Aria narrowed her eyes and gripped the humans cheeks more firmly. "I pay you take care of things for me, and to take care of me.", she said with a smug smile. "Why else do you think your little payments have doubled, hm?" She crushed her lips against Shepard's, violently assaulting her mouth with her tongue.

Shepard shuddered and jerked her head away from Aria, pushing herself off of the bed. She covered the mark on her sternum and fought every urge to just stab the pirate queen in the throat. "I told you I didn't want to be paid for sex, Aria. I can be a weapon for you, but I don't want to be a toy." Shepard buried her rage and spoke evenly, not wanting to incite the asari's wrath. "Do you own me?", she asked, knowing she had no say in the matter.

Aria stared at Shepard with a flat expression. She'd seen the mark on her sternum many times, and more importantly knew exactly what it was. The pirate queen of Omega wasn't easily impressed, much less humbled, but anyone capable of surviving that mark, and remaining their own person, deserved to be cut a little slack now and then.

A little.

"If I owned you, you'd know. Get over yourself, Shepard. You don't pay a slave." She scoffed, turning away again, now very much bored with this conversation. "And as queen, I take my purchases very seriously. Any whore under me would be groveling when she wasn't...otherwise under me."

Shepard felt a wave of relief wash over her, softening the fire that was gathering in her belly for the moment. She scoffed and walked toward the table with her neatly arranged belongings. "Really? I was under the impression that you didn't take the queen thing seriously.", she said, trying very hard to keep things less hostile from now on. The thought of getting on Aria's shit list terrified her. "Then again, the lack of a proper crown is a bit odd."

Aria laughed once and grew a smug smirk.. "Since you're so convinced, get your ass back in bed and service me." She narrowed her eyes. "Whore."

Shepard threw on her 'off-duty' clothes, composed of a worn leather jacket, pants, boots and a collared shirt. The outfit, very much on purpose, had several dozen hiding places for weapons of all sorts. Despite her overwhelming desire to gut Aria in two, she'd lose that fight every time. "Oof, rookie mistake, Aria. Whores didn't fuck the queen." She glanced at the asari sidelong as she slipped her hidden gear into place. "That would be the job of a noble, or a king."

Aria scoffed. "Patriarch doesn't have the quad to try it….even if he still had them.", she said in a vaguely threatening tone.

Shepard shrugged. "Then I guess you'll have to make me a duke, or something. After you hire me to commit regicide by poisoning his cup with a very large bomb, of course." Shepard patted herself down, double checking that her everything was well hidden where it was supposed to be, and would pass most spot checks outside of C-SEC Omega, wondering where your gun was would get you killed, but wondering which one to use was quite the different story.

Aria waved her off. "He's not worth the effort. I have another job for you, though. If you're interested."

Shepard rested her palm on the table, closed her eyes, and sent out a faint biotic pulse. The tiny, round mass-effect field expanded like sonar, allowing her to sense the shifts in mass of her surroundings. After her first week on the station, where no less than four slaver gangs had tried to ambush her in her own apartment, she'd made it a habit to check every so often if she was ever stationary for so long. Most of the time, it was just a precautionary measure. Sadly, this was not one of those times.

There was someone else in the room with them.

Shepard's blue-grey eyes snapped open, thriving in the low light, old training kicking in as her attention snaps from wall to wall. She saw movement, a faint shimmering haze a few dozen feet away, but looked straight through it. "Always, but I've got a good idea of what it might be." Shepard looked back at Aria, who rolled her eyes at the obvious cloaked assassin. She walked briskly toward the armory, a set of neatly arranged weapon racks and workbenches, making sure her path intersected with the mysterious figure.

Aria waited patiently for the figure to attempt something, cleaning the dirt from her fingernails."I figured as much. There's a rumor going around. One I don't particularly like, since it involves my head on a pike and shipped back to the Citadel", she yelled mockingly. "Or maybe it's to the Broker, or Thessia, or Palaven!" She hummed noncommittally. "Fix it. Dou-Triple, your standard rate. I'm in a generous mood, go figure."

Shepard smirked just as she passed the figure. "Deal." She whirled around, ejected the cut down Predator she had concealed in her sleeve, brought the pistol to bear on the cloaked figure's head and stabbed one of her concealed knives straight into it's shoulder. "You move, you die. Are we clear?"

The figure decloaked, revealing a very enraged asari in jet-black armor, riddled with muddy gang markings, armed to the teeth. "Fuck you-" The asari shrieked as Shepard twisted her blade, forcing the asari's knees to buckle. "CLEAR! You crazy bitch! We're clear!" The trespasser struggled to breathe, each breath becoming more labored and stunted than the last.

"Good choice." Shepard reached into her belt and snapped a pulse-suppression collar onto the asari, giving her a rather painful shock as it shunted and stopped her biotics entirely.

"You know that might have worked if either of us were brain dead." Aria glared at the other asari and gave her a slow, obnoxious clap. "You got so far, little girl. Farther than most, but not far enough." She lazily hopped off of the bed and strode toward her spacious walk-in closet. "Break her down for me, will you? I have a lot more to do today, and the last thing I need is some uppity bitch distracting me from it."

"You got it." Shepard pulled her knife out and stuck her thumb in the wound while she stripped the asari of her weaponry, scattering them just out of arm's reach. "...wait." She furrowed her brow, screwed up her face and stared at the asari. "...were you watching us?"

"No!" The asari blushed despite her anger. "Of course not! Why would you ask that?!"

Shepard snarled, tore off the asari's helmet, and ripped the recording hardware out of it's frame. "Probably because of the helmet cam." She squeezed the components between her fingers and focused a small warp field onto it, melting away it's structure to allow her to physically crush it into dust. "I'd cut that memory out of your head myself if Aria didn't want you for something worse."

"Oh, this one is just as stupid as they come." Aria laughed loudly as she reemerged from the closet, donning her typical outfit of a white vest and repurposed huntress leathers. "Shattering her mind and purging those memories is going to be all the more sweet." She snapped her fingers. "Quickly now, Shepard, we're all busy people and I don't need your hesitance toward torture getting in my way." She tapped herself into her comm network, keeping both eyes trained on the asari. "Grizz, what's the security detail's status?"

Shepard rolled her eyes and methodically disassembled the asari's armor power plant. "Got a name?", she asked the trespasser.

"_They're not responding to comms, but our positional data says they're still at their post. Actually...they haven't moved at all in two hours. Huh." _

The asari scoffed. "Yeah. It's fuck off-" The pistol round shredding through her calf's armor plating and straight into the bone cut her off. She roared in agony, dropping on her side as purple blood pooled at her feet. "...fuck, fuck, it's..." The trespasser jerked her head toward Shepard, now towering above her, smoking gun in her hand. "..L-l...Lyrali! Lyrali T'Koma!"

Aria scowled. "Don't worry about the gunshot. That's just Shepard prepping a little would-be assassin. Who apparently walked straight through a dozen of our best men without so much as an alarm!" She narrowed her eyes at Lyrali. "Send Bray and his men down here to investigate, and to replace them, if needed."

"_They're on their way. Anything else?"_

Aria growled "...inform all of our forces that I'm going to be reinstating the Hunt, and to put themselves on standby. If they ask when, tell them..." She eyed Shepard thoughtfully. "...soon." The pirate queen killed her comms bent down next to Lyrali, her eyes flickering with menace. "Lyrali T'Koma. Well, now we have a new face of idiocy, don't we? I believe that I've already established my zero-tolerance policy for both bullshit and noncompliance, so let's not waste words while you continue to waste blood.", she said speaking with absolute malice.

Lyrali scowled even more, if that were possible. "Fine. Who the hell is the bitch with the knives, then? Only half a greeting-" A swift kick to the jaw by Shepard's boot stopped her short, spurting blood and saliva onto the floor. This time, Lyrali remained silent.

"Karen Shepard, not that it matters." Shepard nodded at the asari's compliance and picked up one of her fallen weapons, a cut down M-6 Carnifex. "...you know, I've always wanted one of these. They're a pain in the ass to find, though." She sighted the pistol straight between Lyrali's eyes and swiftly mounted it where her Predator had been. "For now, I'm borrowing this."

Aria shook her head and grabbed Lyrali's throat powerfully, not enough to choke her, but it was very, very close. "Oh, just say it's yours. She'll be dead in a few minutes, and I don't plan on contacting her next of kin or shipping her crap back home.", she growled, almost annoyed at Shepard's slight sense of manners.

"Fine. Mine.", said Shepard, knowing that it was often better for everyone to just agree with Aria. "I'd have gotten more out of her, but you've expressed that you prefer to do this kind of work personally." Shepard casually gripped the asari's other arm, the one not connected to the knife wound, and violently twisted, snapping the bone in half. She rose to her feet above the asari's shriek, and took a step back, crossing her arms. "She's prepped. Can't run, shoot, or use her biotics."

Aria rolled her eyes. "Then how am I supposed to interrogate her, Shepard? Biotics and melding use the same neural pathways." She shook her head in frustration as she fiddled with the collar. "Don't humans take classes on galactic culture and biology in school? Or are you just that old?"

"Uhh, yeah. Sort of." Shepard shrugged laxly, looking away from the two asari. "I don't remember most of the anatomy stuff.", she said, as old memories of her school, home and farm engulfed in flames flashed through her mind's eye. "Turian cock structure didn't seem all that important or enticing at the time."

"Considering your recent change of heart about asari, I have a feeling you're going to regret not paying more attention to that…"

Shepard rolled her eyes. "It wasn't sex-ed, Aria. Teaching kids how to fuck other species is just…" She shuddered at the thought of her thirteen year old self learning how to physically please a turian. "...fucked up."

Aria stopped removing the collar to look up at Shepard, genuinely confused. "...humans don't do that?"

Shepard widened her eyes. "Don't do what? Interspecies sexual education? No, of course not! Why would anyone teach something like that in a formal setting?!"

"You mean what the asari have been doing for millennia, Shepard? Or have you forgotten even more from those classes than you thought?" Aria stared at Shepard for a long moment. "It's astounding how naive you can be."

"You're shitting me. Asari actually do that."

"How else would we learn without proper instruction, Shepard?" Aria sighed, tired of Shepard's inability to see the obvious truth. "It's not as if our entire race is based upon the ideal of diversifying our genetics-" She waved Shepard off, bored. "Nevermind, just be quiet and watch out for stray vorcha, or something."

As the pirate queen unlocked the restraint, she glowered at the other asari as violently as she could muster. The collar fell to the floor with a loud clang. "There we are." She grabbed Lyrali's head forcefully, crushing it between her palms as her eyes swirled into a black void. "Now let's find out what she knows.", she growled, initiating the meld.

Shepard stared at the joined pair for a moment and yawned. She'd forgotten that watching two asari meld wasn't exactly the same as watching a regular couple have sex, in the way that it wasn't even the least bit interesting from the outside. At least, not this particular kind of joining. No movement, no sound. She felt a little jealous of Lyrali, who at least got a good show before getting caught.

Shepard winced, and was for once very glad that Aria was aggressive enough to do these things personally. Since Aria was, for the moment, indisposed, she thought it best to make sure that they were secure. It wasn't that she distrusted the professionalism of Aria's people, far from it, but clarification never hurt anyone. She walked over to the nearby intercom panel and clicked it on. "This is Shepard. Is the exterior secure?"

No response.

Shepard raised a brow. "Uhh, hello?"

"_Shepard! It's Bray. My team and I just arrived. Is Aria with you?"_

Shepard looked over at the still frozen pair, noting Aria's face was locked in the most rage fueled expression she'd ever seen. "Technically. She's inside of some wannabe assassin at the moment." It almost looked like she was caught in intense biotic combat, her mouth wide open in a silent roar. Her fingernails were digging into Lyrali's cheeks, drawing purple blood that coupled well with the younger asari's muted fear plain on her face. "...it's freaking me out a little, how frozen they are. Aren't they supposed to be moving for dominance, or something?"

"_Hey, I'm just as lost as you are. As long as she's not dead or dying, you're fine. Anyway, That assassin is going to be the least of her problems, most likely. The security detail is...well, let's just say we can't tell where their blood begins and the vorcha bodies end. They got torn apart by…" _He paused for a few seconds. "_I'm going to be honest with you, Shepard. I have never seen Vorcha that could claw through heavy armor like this. Some of these guys are just...meat."_

"What? How the hell did vorcha even get up here?" Shepard took another glance at the melded duo, and widened her eyes as it became clear that they were both starting to move, albeit slowly. Aria was adding more pressure to Lyrali's head while the assassin was reaching for her shotgun. "Shit, they're moving. Okay, good luck."

"_You too, Shepard." _

Shepard cut the line and sprinted over to the pair, snatching up all the weaponry near them and quickly disassembling them on one of the armory's workbenches. When she got back inside the main area, Aria had pinned Lyrali to the floor, though oddly still seemed to be struggling with making the final kill.

Shepard felt her gut scream something. Loud and fast. It was that feeling, the one she always had when something just wasn't right, amplified. Her short time on Omega had given her countless opportunities to improve her understanding of this part of her that was so accurate it may as well have been extrasensory. She reached out with her biotics, performing another sonar-pulse, and found nothing. Still, she took a closer look around the room, checking the reinforced windows for breaches or micro-filament explosives with an omni-tool scan.

Shepard frowned, reading that the scan had only picked up the interlaced polymer-composite in every mil-spec pane of glass. Aria had even gotten it redone in the last week, apparently, as the data plainly stated that the material was relatively fresh. She turned around, watching as Aria's body became covered in surging dark energy.

Shepard shielded her eyes from the blinding light and stepped closer. "...what the hell?"

Paintings, tables, pillows and other light décor began to rattle and shake. Shepard looked down to see the entire floor start quake. "What...the hell have I gotten myself into?" The furniture slowly floated into mid-air, attempting to carry Shepard with them. She grounded herself with a nullifying high-mass field and drew her new Carnifex, stepping carefully to the joined pair. Just as she started to move, a bolt of blue fire arced out of Aria and tore through the walls and ceiling, leaving a long line of melted metal in it's wake.

Shepard cursed loudly and sprinted away from the pirate queen. Another bolt surged out of Aria, causing even more destruction. Shepard threw herself to the floor, shielding herself from the blaring biotic storm that was rapidly engulfing all the bedroom. The entire room shuddered and creaked as if it were being torn from it's foundation.

Finally, Aria broke her silence with a raging, blood thirsty roar that seemed to have no end or limit to volume. She heard a loud, shattering crack, and could only hope that was Lyrali's skull and not one of the suite's support columns.

At that, Shepard considered why she was even staying, since loyalty to Aria really wasn't one of her priorities if it was going to get her killed rather than being granted the right to live. At any rate, it didn't matter. She couldn't leave without being torn in half by the blinding typhoon flowing above her. Still, she did her best to crawl toward the exit, increasing her mass as high as she safely could.

Shepard, knowing that shooting an asari during a meld would most likely utterly destroy the other's mind in the process, did the only thing she could do. Get angry. "ARIA! I SWEAR TO GOD IF YOU DON'T CUT THIS BULLSHIT OUT RIGHT NOW I'LL-"

A supernova detonated in the center of the pair, sending Shepard flying into the back wall with enough force to shatter her spine. She frantically wrapped herself in a low-mass field to soften the impact. Shepard hit the wall hard, definitely enough to leave a nasty bruise all over her right side, but she'd live. For now.

Shepard tumbled to the ground, sharp pain radiating through her shoulder, and craned her neck toward the smoking crater in the center of the room. Virtually all of Aria's apartment was either on fire, had been on fire, or was turned to ash. Half of Aria's clothes were smoldering, and Lyrali's armor had literally melted. The pirate queen looked entirely drained, her purple skin pale and her body shaking from over exertion. Lyrali was faring much worse, as it became clear that Aria's mind had, eventually, managed to overpower her own by sheer brute force. Her entire head was caved in.

Shepard managed to scramble to her feet and remount her cut-down Carnifex. "What the fuck was that, Aria?! Are you ok?" She choked, waving away the smoke filled air. "You were in there for six minutes!"

Aria panted heavily, her body drenched in sweat. "...six...Goddess..." She attempted to stand, only manage to stumble forward into Shepard's arms like dead weight. The Pirate Queen of Omega was as weak as a drunken maiden, and Shepard knew it. "Shepard. She took something...out of my head. I need you to-"

Bray, a barrel chested batarian that was a head and shoulders taller than Shepard, burst through the front door down the hall with two dozen of Omega's best. He surged toward the bedroom, the rattle of heavy boots nothing compared to the recently weathered storm. "Shit." He looked at Shepard, surprisingly unhostile. "What the hell happened in here?"

Aria's head lolled, putting all of her weight on Shepard for support. "...little bitch was one of those…" She took, quick, shallow breaths, fighting to stay awake. "...mutants. Rekshi. Daywind." The pirate queen gritted her teeth and her eyes widened. "...glass. Move. G...glass…"

"She might be delirious." Shepard looked between Aria and Bray. "...I think my translator crapped out. No idea what a...Rekshi is."

"No, I didn't get it either." Bray grunted and shook his head. "Might be something old. Or gibberish." He cracked his neck and beckoned to his men. "Alright! Sassisk, your team secures Aria. Contingency 4." He gestured curtly toward a rather tall, blue skinned salarian who saluted and moved to do as he was told. Shepard nodded and tried to transfer Aria's deadweight to the Salarian without dropping her."The rest of you, we're running interference! Everyone is paying their dues early, because the queen is just-"

The massive, panoramic windows exploded inward in a lattice, sending long shards of industrial glass straight at them. Transparent lances shredded through armor and bone, ripping apart nearly all of Aria's men. Shepard barely had enough time to yank Bray and Aria, and by extension Sassik, to the ground and shield them with the strongest bubble she could muster. The shrapnel deflected harmlessly off of the barrier, which quickly dissipated.

"EVERYONE! MOVE!"

Thick, black smog flowed into the apartment as Bray and the rest of his men quickly hauled Aria's barely conscious body to safety. Shepard, having deflected the brunt of the explosion and shrapnel, could only hear ringing as she tried to catch her breath. After mentally kicking herself for not realizing that Aria would need entirely new windows to reinforce them, she rolled her shoulders and thrust out her hands, sending a light biotic wave over the room to clear the black smog.

The apartment cleared, allowing for Omega's poor excuse for a sun to shine through the empty windows, and revealed a very focused helmeted Asari in elegant, masterfully crafted armor, removing a small grey box from Lyrali's open skull. Shepard ejected her cut-down Carnifex and emptied her clip, rapid fire, as she moved closer, wrapping her body in dark energy.

The asari turned to look at her, almost annoyed rather than surprised, as the rounds deflected harmlessly off of her high-tech armor and kinetic barriers. "Hm. That's a new one." She clipped the grey box to her belt and casually drew her sidearm, a weapon Shepard had never seen before, and sighted it straight at her. "Whatever poor excuse for biotics you have in store for me can't-"

Shepard didn't need another hint. She hurled herself into a near-zero mass-effect channel, in an effort to slam her body into the asari at subsonic speeds. Much to her surprise, however, the asari had managed to divert her charge trajectory, using a level of biotic mastery Shepard had only dreamed about, two feet off target. "...how did you-"

The asari quickly grabbed Shepard by the neck, and hoisted her up. "Skill. Centuries of experience." She holstered her sidearm, and strengthened her grip on the human. "Most of all, I'm not stupid enough to think that speed equates invincibility."

"Yeah? Well…" Shepard choked and struggled to get out a snarky retort. "...same goes for…" She flicked her wrists, revealing two small, warming up heat knives. "...standing still!" Shepard stabbed her searing monomolecular blades into the asari's flanks, just above her waist. They dug in deep, and the asari dropped Shepard with a surprised yelp, falling on all fours.

Shepard hit the ground hard, coughing and forcing herself to regain her composure long enough to get the hell out of there. Thinking fast, she planted a small, rudimentary single-receiver tracker on the asari's sidearm and snatched the greybox off of her belt while the other woman was still paralyzed from the deep, cauterizing wound.

Escape routes were minimal, at best. Normally, taking either the stairs or the elevators would be the safest way out. This asari complicated things. There was no way to guarantee she'd even be able to make it to the front door before the asari recovered, and even if she did, Shepard's odds of survival only got lower. She couldn't outrun the asari down the stairs, and the elevators could be easily biotically crushed around her or melted from warp fire.

The only option left to her was the stupid one. Jumping out of the window that the asari just blew open and using her biotics to slow her fall. Biotic base jumping was something she hadn't done in years, but it was the only path that didn't end in certain death.

"...this is a really bad idea...", she muttered under her breath.

Shepard sprinted toward the massive, empty window panes, slipping the greybox to her belt and ejecting the spent heat knives with a flick of her wrists. "I may be impulsive, but I'm not arrogant! Couldn't kill you a minute ago, can't kill you now!" She took a deep breath, and, despite her best judgement, base-jumped out of the fiftieth story penthouse suite.

-(|)-

Tela Vasir was not amused. She'd just gotten stabbed with knives designed to cut through heavy mechs and krogan, but for some reason they'd found themselves in her flesh, catching her off guard in a way that only a stupid, reckless human could have thought of. The Spectre grunted to her feet, taking quick stock of the rampant destruction her finely tuned plan had wrought.

Everything was either on fire, had been on fire, or was turned to ash, and it wasn't clear who had done what, or what had happened in the confusion. Ideally, multiple groups would claim responsibility, and Aria's people would wipe them out, which would most likely save someone quite a bit of work.

Vasir winced and applied medigel to her wounds, the mimetic biofoam easing the pain of the third degree burns on her sides. With the exception of that human, whose rather bold breach of Omega's one rule over and over and over again had actually managed to make Lyrali come off as more of an idiot than she was supposed to be, because now she really was an idiot, everything had gone perfectly.

The Pirate Queen of Omega's arrogance had reared it's ugly head, letting her fall prey to a very, very meticulously planned trap. Meld-Interrogation was a favorite of Aria's, as she'd very publicly advertised that she could not be bested as a finely tuned fear tactic and source of propaganda. For all intents and purposes, outside of the best matriarchs and justicars in the Republics, it was true. Aria had no match in a battle of mental will.

Unless of course, that combatant happened to be have an incredibly rare mutation of the latent, and horrifying, genetic disorder that caused Ardat-Yakshi. Rekshi, or Daywind, as they'd become known millennia ago, were far harder to detect than their more dangerous sisters. In fact, most never manifested their more dominating latent traits at all. Rekshi were perfectly capable of performing like any normal asari, though the act of joining would often be far more taxing than it normally would be for both partners. It rarely, if ever, resulted in death, and since the asari who experienced it internalized it as "amazing sex", no one would be the wiser.

Yet, there were some who'd been caught earlier, and trained for missions just like these. For asari, intelligence extraction, and in some rarer cases inception, amounted to literally invading the target's mind. Since Aria was legally untouchable, and would see a matriarch or a justicar coming twenty relays away, this was the only option Vasir had considered viable.

The vorcha, however, were a far more personal touch. Over her centuries of duty, she'd acquired access to certain less-than-legal vorcha 'farms', where their only goal was to breed them as super soldiers on a mass, disposable scale. It was rare when she got to use them at all, but when she did, they always performed to specifications. Bloodthirsty and thorough. Eventually she'd have to torch that facility, in case the Blood Pack got wind of it, but that was neither here nor there.

Vasir clicked open her omni-tool, confirming that all camera feeds in a six block radius were still on a loop. She nodded and opened the secured comm line to her ship. "_Orisini, _this is Vasir. Operation is complete, be ready to take off in thirty."

"_Roger that, Spectre. Beginning pre-flight procedures. Should we inform the council?"_

Vasir shook her head, looking out over the station through the massive windows. "No, that won't be necessary Fhara. I'll handle that when I arrive."

"_Very well, Spectre. Goddess go with you."_

"And with you." The spectre cut off the comm and smirked to herself. There was never anything quite like the prideful feeling of a methodical, high-risk plan going off flawlessly. It worried her that both the Broker and the Council had given her the same mission, or that rather the Broker encouraged her very, very enthusiastically, to acquire information from Aria's head, the nature of which they both had refused to divulge. Vasir didn't like being kept in the dark, as a spectre she shouldn't have to be, but if it was for the greater good of the galaxy, the greybox on her belt was-

Not there. Gone.

Vasir stared, dumbfounded at the murky cityscape below her as white, hot rage boiled into understanding. Her hands balled into fists, and dark energy flared and surged around her wildly.

"...oh, you crazy, stupid, sloppy little BITCH!"

-(|)-

Shepard screeched through the air, keeping herself straight as an arrow as she plummeted toward the ground, and opened her internal comm line. She grunted, actively dampening her speed with a low-mass field around her body. "Zaeed!" She managed to land on one of the smaller buildings below her. Her boots hit the ground with a sharp deflection of energy, making small cracks in the rooftop around her feet. "I need a pick-up! I have no goddamn clue what's going on, but somebody just out mindfucked Aria and then bombed her penthouse!" Shepard took a deep breath and channeled as much dark energy as she could, hurling herself forward into a long range biotic charge to the next rooftop. "I also may have pissed off a very, very powerful asari that wasn't Aria! Top of the line equipment, very dangerous!"

"_You're guddamn insane, you know that?"_ Zaeed's grizzled voice cut through the chaos around her. "_I'm on my way. I don't know what the fuck kind of mess you just got us into, but I'm here for it."_

"Alright, so I-". Shepard stumbled to the ground, falling onto her stomach, as a massive shock wave swept over her from behind. She turned around to see a searingly bright flare explode out of the penthouse. "...oh my God she realized I took the greybox." Shepard forced herself to her feet and surged forward into another extended biotic charge, now very much motivated by fear. "Goddamnit, get your ass here now, Massani! I'm in my fucking civvies! I've got a tracker on her, not that it really helps at this point!"

"_What-what greybox?! What the hell did you do!?'_

"She took it out of the mindfucker's head, and Aria said she took something from-" Shepard looked over her shoulder to see the asari land four buildings back in a pillar of white, enraged light, shattering three floors of windows below the crater she left in her wake. "IT'S NOT IMPORTANT RIGHT NOW JUST GET HERE!"

Shepard felt adrenalin pump harder and faster than it had in nearly a decade, pure terror keeping her already tired and burned body moving. She cursed loudly, realizing that in about thirty seconds that asari was going to be right on top of her. But, by some stroke of divine intervention, a Blue Suns transport just happened to be passing overhead. If she could charge up there, she could probably raid their supply of rockets launchers and maybe stand a chance-

A powerful biotic flare set off a series of explosions, detonating the transport in several hundred places, blowing it out of the sky and into the city below. She cursed loudly, and readied herself into another charge when the asari crashed into the rooftop not ten feet in front of her, sending an earthquake of force barreling into her.

"Shi-"

Shepard managed to ground herself against the blast, but the asari snapped forward ahead of the wave, slamming her underhanded fist into the Shepard's gut. She coughed up blood, saw black spots, and yelped in delayed agony.

"Found you.", growled the asari, malice dripping from her lips.

Shepard struggled to regain her composure as she hacked up more blood, her knees shaking from the sheer force of that hit. The barrier from the impact blast had softened some of the blow, but not much. "...yeah…", she said, struggling to breath, let alone think. "...you did…"

"I'll admit, that was pretty fucking clever. Get me to lower my guard...", whispered the asari, keeping her fist held against Shepard's stomach. "...assert my dominance…"

Shepard grunted painfully and ejected both hidden pistols into her palms in a desperate attempt to gain some sort of standing. She shoved them both into the asari's chest, only to watch the other woman yank them away and crush them both in bright warp fire.

"And then hit me with something that you know no one would be insane enough to defend against, or rather ever possibly could." She flicked her wrists, lazily scattering the scrambled pieces of of metal across the rooftop. "Unlike that." The asari snapped forward, ripping out one of Shepard's knifes from her clothes, and shattering it against her own gauntlets. "...and that." She did it again, so quickly and elegantly that Shepard couldn't adequately defend herself.

Shepard growled, drew a large heat knife from behind her belt, pounded her boot against the floor with a small biotic pulse to get the asari off-balance, and lunged forward to stab at her neck. Much to her dismay, the asari caught her arm mid-swing and slammed her helmet into Shepard's skull, nearly blacking her out. She felt her eyes lose all focus and blood trickle down from the gash on her forehead.

"...and this…" The asari violently twisted her wrist, snapping it in half, pulled her forward, smashed her fist into Shepard's throat, and then her sternum, breaking it, with a brutal one-two finisher.

Shepard silently screamed in mortal agony, fell onto her back, unable to breath, and struggled to remain conscious. She opened her mouth, searched for air, and found none. The asari towered over her, glowing bright as the sun. "I'm disappointed. I really thought that you might have been worth the effort. But I guess you're all out of tricks. "

Shepard coughed violently and caught a glimpse of something small, fast, and blue out of the corner of her eye. "...got one...more…"

The asari rolled her eyes. "Really. Of course you do. What, are you going to shoot molten lead out of your eyes?"

"Nope.", she wheezed, staying awake taking nearly everything she had. "Gonna hit you with a car."

The asari raised her brow. "...wha-" She instantly turned as she heard the screech of Zaeed's skycar and wrapped herself in the strongest barrier she could just before the maniac's car slammed directly into her, sending the asari flying off of the roof and creashing straight through the outer wall of an apartment building across the street.

Zaeed instantly turned the car around, landed just beside Shepard and got out. He looked her over, confirming she wasn't dead, and gestured to the rather extensive damage to the front bumper. "You're paying for that."

Shepard was dazed and tried to nod. Her vision was blurry and filled with black and white, but she felt being lifted off of the ground and then put back down in a more comfortable place. She blinked, seeing that she was now in the passenger seat of the car. Shepard gasped loudly into a cough as Zaeed stabbed a hypodermic needle into her leg. "Mother of...shit!"

"Yeah, that's why I always keep those on me.", said Zaeed, giving her a closer look. "Give you one helluva kick in the balls. Or in your case, quad." He chuckled, igniting the drive core.

Shepard's blue-grey eye's flicked around the skycar's interior as the morphine, adrenalin and combat stims quickly surged through her body. "Thanks." She looked at her wrist and winced. "...let's just go. I'm gonna need to set this, and get into one of those bone regenerators for my chest. Most of it is broken." Shepard looked down at her rather torn clothing and frowned. "...I really liked this shirt…", she lamented under her breath.

Zaeed nodded as he lifted the skycar into the air, flying away from the battlefield. "Alright. After you get yourself patched up, you mind explaining to me what the hell just happened?"

"Yeah, sure." Shepard looked out the window at the asari's final resting place-

Not there. Gone.

"Shit." Shepard felt her heart rate skyrocket and her eyes bug out of her head. "Drive. She's gone!" She motioned forward, panicking. "Drive, drive, drive, drive!"

-(|)-

Tela Vasir was very, very, angry. She'd fallen for the same trick twice, and by the same human's hand, in less than an hour. The last time she was this angry got her nominated as a spectre. It took more than a little luck, and centuries of biotics training, to withstand a skycar crashing into her at full speed, but somehow she'd done it.

She pulled herself out of the remains of some poor fool's grand piano, only to see a rather miffed salarian still sitting at his bench, glaring at her as if he was waiting for her to fix it. "...you have insurance, right?"

The salarian blinked. "Against...what exactly? How would I file a claim that says an asari commando crashed through my wall and tore apart half of my home?!" He gestured wildly around his apartment, displaying the rather catastrophic collateral damage Vasir had caused. Half of the outer wall was missing, most of his plumbing was shot and the front door was crushed under several different kinds of broken tables, bookcases and chairs. "It looks like someone crashed a shuttle in here!"

"Looks like you just answered your own question." Vasir shrugged and biotically hopped over to the gaping hole in the wall. She looked up, and quickly snapped up to the roof of the building.

Her body erupted in blinding blue light, having only suffered some minor bruising thanks to her inertial dampeners, excellent barrier work, and kinetically resistant armor.

The spectre spotted the skycar taking off and launched herself into the air, landing on what she recognized as a salvaged C-SEC patrol car flying a few lanes over from them. Her heavy boots partially caved the hood as she grounded herself. Vasir opened the driver's side door, hurled the turian driver out to certain death and took control of the vehicle.

This was what she hated about Omega the most. No official jurisdiction, so anyone recognizing her could incite a war by calling their cousin, which also meant no support. She could only bring what she could smuggle or carry, and nobody local would be willing to help her. So when some uppity human and her friend decide to fuck her over, she has to personally chase them down or it's somehow even more illegal.

She sped toward them, delighted that her skycar was inherently more maneuverable and faster than theirs, and followed them over and between buildings. Whoever this driver was, he was utterly insane. She snapped around corners far too small, ducked under overpasses far too low and soared through vertical shafts far too narrow for any typical pilot.

Vasir's eyes widened as Omega's main skyway came into view from behind a massive tower. Thousands and thousands of skycars zipped just feet from one another in all directions. "You have got to be kidding me." Navigating it, by heading straight through the middle, was something that not even Vasir was crazy enough to consider. Apparently, who ever this driver was, had and was intending to do just that. His approach vector meant it was either a bluff, or he really thought he could lose her in that steel jungle and not come out a mangled mess.

"I just got hit by a car and shrugged it off like it was nothing." Vasir shook off her worry with a scoff. "I can dodge some traffic."

-(|)-

Shepard loosely gestured at the traffic around the skycar. "Zaeed. You've missed four merging lanes. Take us through the Ikina district. Faster than the Nexus.". She stared straight ahead, a little delirious from the meds, until she realized that he was actually going to try and fly straight through the center of the main skyway. "Zaeed...don't do this right now. Don't do this right now! In case you forgot, I have a lot of broken bones right now and really need to go to a hospital!" Zaeed had wanted to do this for many, many years. It was like his White Whale, and yet somehow it had nothing to do with Vido.

"You said it yourself, Shepard!", laughed Zaeed as he maneuvered their skycar for an approach run. "Shit's hit the fan, so there's no telling if I'm gonna be able to try this tomorrow. " He jabbed his thumb behind him. "And she's gonna catch up to us in a few seconds anyway, so we'll be dead either way."

"Fine!" Shepard gripped the upholstery as they sped toward the nexus, fighting every urge to bail out of the car. "Goddamnit, Ahab, don't screw this up!"

"Not a chance."

With that, the skycar barreled nose first into the most congested part of traffic, a field of metal two kilometers in either direction. It bobbed, weaved, and rolled through trucks and luxury sedan alike. Shepard was pretty sure she could hear several six-hundred car pileups, and then downs, behind them as Zaeed's primal need to outwit an artificial construct raced forward. Needless to say, the lack of a safety harness was something that Shepard really wished she had invested in when she had the chance. Miraculously, just as quickly as they head gone into the breach, they emerged back into the light unscathed.

"Told you it'd work.", said Zaeed, as he tapped the tracker on the skycar's hud. "She's down. Altitude dropping like a cinderblock."

"Goddamnit, fine. You win." Shepard looked at him begrudgingly. "I'll pay you later. After I'm not running on stims." She sighed and rubbed her eyes with her good hand. "Take us down to her. I want to make sure she's dead, and then take her armor if it's salvageable. Looked like it'd fit."

Zaeed nodded and sent the skycar into a lazy dive.

-(|)-

"...s_pectre, please respond. Spectre? Spectre!"_

Vasir awoke with a powerful grasp at breath, only to choke on the smoke filled air surrounding her rather spectacular wreck. She cursed as tried to crawl out of the fallen skycar, but couldn't find a hole large enough. With a little effort, she made one of her own by slamming a warp field into the hull. The metal melted away, giving her enough room to shamble out of the burning debris and into the relatively clearer air of the station.

"...fuck today. Fuck all of today."

"_Thank the Goddess! Spectre, we need to leave. Now. Some kind of violent rally is starting outside the private docks, and one of the ops techs detected some of the GTS batteries on the other side of the station coming online." _

The spectre struggled to her feet, and immediately felt incredibly dizzy and sick. She looked down in shock. Purple blood was seeping from open wounds everywhere on her body. Her chest plate had been cracked in half by the crash, and she felt a rather large gash in her right side coupled with what felt like her stomach being loose. She dropped to her knees, took off her helmet, and, eyes glazing over, vomited onto the street.

"Go. Fly to Imorkan and keep comms open. Pick a layover station and siege it. If anyone asks, tell them not to fuck with the Broker." Vasir coughed violently. "You're still in system. I can get to you."

"_...acknowledged, Spectre. Goddess go with you."_

"And with you." Vasir fumbled for the stims on her belt and quickly injected them straight into her neck. The spectre clenched her teeth to hold in a yelp and very quickly became more alert. She reached behind her back for a rifle that was no longer there, then a shotgun that was broken in half, and then finally her sidearm.

"Thank the Goddess one of you still…" She glared at the tiny tracker on her submachine gun and crushed it between two fingers. "...tracking me even though she ran away. I can't decide if you're either brilliant or just incredibly lucky, human."

There was a click behind her, a pistol safety being disabled. "Can't it be both?" The human smirked. "Zaeed! She's over here! Stop looting the other wrecks!"

"Not worth the guddamn time, anyway! Nothing good on 'em besides a few spare parts, Shepard!" Off in the distance, the older human, apparently Zaeed, looked up and jogged over to them. "Oh, look at that. Still alive. Damned impressive, I'd say."

"I'm very hard to kill, if you hadn't noticed." Vasir snarled, feeling the cold metal of a hand cannon pressed against the back of her skull. "...how long was I out?"

The woman, apparently Shepard, shrugged. "An hour. Maybe more. That helmet must have been sealed tight." She gestured around them. "The tracker I planted on you really didn't help after the crash. There are quite a few wrecks down here already. Many of them rather recent…", she said, stamping her final words with a glare toward Zaeed.

"Are you really going to start judging the ethics of the man who just saved your life twice inside of half an hour? The plan worked! Nothing else should matter!" Zaeed scoffed. "Guddamn ungrateful is what you are."

Shepard rolled her eyes, exasperated. "Okay. Fine. Thank you."

Vasir growled, enraged that her captivity was being ignored. "This is all very entertaining, but how about you just give me back that greybox, and we forget this ever happened."

Shepard hummed tauntingly and strafed around to the front. "What was that? You want this back?" She tapped the greybox on her belt.

"Yes. It's very important that I have that. ", she said through gritted teeth. "I'll bleed out soon anyway, so why do you even care?" The asari roared, glaring at Shepard. "You just got yourself into the most trouble anyone could ever be in, you stupid bitch!"

"You made a play for Aria, who's done a very good job at making sure that Zaeed and I don't get eaten by vorcha or krogan. " Shepard scowled. "Letting you run away with that greybox would be far more trouble than what you have in mind, I assure you."

Zaeed sighted his rifle at her head. "Point is, you kicked the piss out of my friend here, along with our generous benefactor, and I don't take too kindly to that."

"I didn't make a play for Aria! Nobody with the power to make that happen is stupid enough to do it! The political fallout-" Vasir stopped herself short, realizing that she was slightly delirious from the crash and didn't want to reveal too much about the inner workings of the galaxy. "Ok. Fine. Maybe if I'd explained who I was earlier, none of this would have happened." She sneered, hoping this bombshell still carried some sort of weight. "Tela Vasir. Special Tactics and Reconnaissance."

Zaeed and Shepard slowly looked at one another, but it was Shepard who broke the silence, in the most surprising way possible. "Shit." Shepard froze, the last few hours of her life completely shattering. "Oh. Oh, no." Shepard holstered her pistol and turned white as a ghost. "We...this is...this so bad."

Shepard's cool, blue-grey eyes locked into something old. Vasir couldn't quite make it out, but she was slowly realizing that neither of these two were anywhere near stupid. The human woman cursed softly and quickly applied a hefty dose of medigel to the asari's most obvious wounds. "Zaeed, get her in the car. We're getting her and I patched up at the clinic. Then, we'll move from there, see if we can't figure this out." She stumbled to the skycar, her physicality betraying her commanding tone.

Zaeed snorted. "...guddamn hero types..." The grizzled mercenary slung his rifle, effortlessly swung Vasir over is shoulder, and jogged toward their skycar. "...gonna get us all killed..."

Vasir roared and, weakened as she was, tried to offer up some sort of resistance by slamming both her fists into his back. "Put me down, you dumb ape! What the hell are you doing?!"

Zaeed dropped Vasir into the back seat and settled himself into the front. He fired up the drive core and ignited the thrusters. "...this is going to get much worse before it gets better."

Shepard slipped into her seat and slammed the door shut. "Just focus on getting us to the clinic." The skycar took off, quickly rejoining traffic.

Vasir stared incredulously at the human pair as the seedy brown of Omega blurred beneath them. She winced several times as the burning pain for the medigel taking effect broke through the painkillers. "Who the hell are you people and why are you helping me?" The spectre fidgeted in the back, not quite strong enough to sit up.

Shepard turned around and resisted the urge to salute and stand at attention, despite being seated. "Karen Shepard, and this is my associa-friend, Zaeed Massani."

Zaeed rolled his eyes. "Almost had her thinking we didn't like one another. Good job." The mercenary frowned and surged the skycar forward. "I'm not one to stick my neck out for people I don't even guddamn know, so yeah, why are we helping, Shepard?"

"Why?" Shepard snarled in her seat. "Because I am not going to be responsible for killing a Spectre. That's not going on my conscience." She stared at Zaeed, making her stance perfectly clear. "We help her. End of discussion."

Zaeed grumbled, clearly not happy with that decision as he made a rather hard turn. "I guess it'd be stupidly cruel to not take her with us when we're going to the same guddamn place." He shrugged. "Not like I have to make two stops."

"Yeah, big fucking hassle that would be!" Vasir flashed her teeth and did her best to glare at the back of their heads. "And where might we be going, exactly? Afterlife? Suns? Eclipse? Blood Pack? Hegemony? Cerberus? Daughters of Athame?"

Shepard looked over her shoulder, her expression oddly calm. "Gozu Medical Clinic. Best care on the station."

Vasir spat blood onto the floor of the skycar. "So an organ farm." The spectre scowled. "Land the car and leave me to die. I don't want any of your goddess-damned help."

Zaeed laughed. "Trust me, lady. This one sure as hell isn't an organ farm."

Shepard forced a reassuring smile. "The doctor we're taking you to see is the least hack of a doctor I've ever met. We're pretty sure he still has his medical license. Legally."

Vasir raised a brow, curious. "Name?"

"Mordin Solus."

-(|)-

**A/N: I'm pretty proud of how this turned out, but I'd love to get feedback on the following things, either in a review or a PM. **

**(Yes, I realize that I accidentally re-purposed much of the Shadow Broker DLC chase, but I think it different enough to stand on it's own.)**

**BSG-Legacy described it best when he said I should consider this as a "Pilot" for a good cable TV series. The goal of those is to tell us the setting, the dynamics, the relationships and the very basic idea of the conflict. Do you feel I communicated all of those things well in this fic?**

**It was incredibly uncomfortable for me to write Shepard so submissive, both emotionally and physically, to Aria. I wanted to show that still very much a strong person, even while under someone's thumb and in a very weird place. When reading it, did you folks have a similar feeling?**

**I'm experimenting with changing perspectives to make 'scene changes' clearer. Sort of like a movie or a play. I think it worked, but did anyone feel disjointed by it?**

**Those who have read my previous works may have noticed the lack of italics for emphasis in dialogue, besides radio chatter. Fellow writers have expressed to me that truly good dialogue doesn't need to be labeled for emphasis, and that the reader will understand from the context. Basically, it's not a tv show or a movie, so don't write it like it's being performed. Did I accomplish that to a degree, or would you rather see a return of the italics?**

**Lastly, another thing previous readers may have noticed, I chose not to include internal character monologues in this chapter. That is, a sentence or two removed from the story that is spoken by a character inside of their own heads. ****In the past, it was a source of humor, but I often felt it could make the pacing feel a bit off. ****Would you like to see those come back, or did you folks think it worked fine without it? For new readers, would you like to see that included in future chapters? **

**To those of you who read through these A/Ns, I truly appreciate it. Even if your thoughts on the matter is minimal, even a few words, it would be extremely helpful just to jot them down in the review box below or to PM me. All criticism, no matter how overly critical or meaningless you may think it to be, is helpful to understanding my own work. **

**As always: Thanks for reading :D**


	2. Internal Affairs

**A/N: Oof, Finals Week! Glad that's over with. Bioware owns all, etc**

**Holy crap! You guys and gals really seemed to like this one. I got more reviews and favs/follows in a week than all of my stories have after 6+ months of release! Thanks so much! :D**

**As always, the following chapter was beta'd by BSG-Legacy.**

**EDIT: Once again, LogicalPremise saves the day, this time with his extensive understanding of physiology and genetics. A section near the end regarding some rather risky genetics work has been edited to make scientific sense! Hooray!**

**EDIT 2: Retconned M-27 Grizzly IFV to M-080 Barracuda IFV, because the Grizzly stinks. Check the Mass Effect Wikia if you can't recall the M-080, as it's canon. The name isn't, but the Alliance goes from Bear to ? to Shark to Another Shark. So why not?**

**EDIT 3: Okay, I clicked the wrong button on "Update Chapter" and posted it as a new chapter. Sorry! **

-(|)-

The dark, primal and almost arousing bass of Afterlife washed over Aria, each powerful beat resonated through her bones and forcing her heart to pump harder. Pink and orange neon danced across her skin, now drenched in flop sweat, as pirate queen slumped onto her couch, her body still drained from her mental battle with the rekshi. She folded her hands onto her lap and snapped her eyes at Anto, a wide-eyed batarian with vomit colored skin.

"Anto. No more visitors today. I'm sick of hearing everyone's problems." Aria forced an arrogant and powerful laugh, ensuring that it could be heard just over the blaring music of the club. "Find me some solutions." She frowned. "...and some varren kebabs. I'm starving."

"You got it.", replied Anto, nodding as he left the upper area.

With a few taps of her omni-tool, Aria closed the command center's reinforced shutters, activated it's auditory dampeners and, just for good measure, turned up music up. As soon as they were secure, a series of aerosol displays materialized on the walls around them. "Bring all of our GTS batteries and GARDIAN defenses online. Full readiness." Vidfeeds, comm traffic, environmental controls, station defense systems and general situational awareness screens surrounded the raised platform, giving the pirate queen absolute control Omega from the comfort of her couch. "Inform the crews that they are to fire on all targets, regardless of size or ownership. I don't want anyone leaving my station until we figure out what the hell just happened."

Bray nodded, standing beside her with his arms crossed, and watched her ops techs sift through the mountain of data and input her orders to their forces across the station. "You sure you wouldn't rather do this from the bunker?"

Aria shook her head and flashed her teeth. "No, but your concern is noted. Omega needs to understand that I'm still in control, and I can't do that if I'm hiding in some hole away from everyone's eyes and ears." She glared at the displays, forcing herself to stay lucid. "I want YMIR mechs and heavy turrets guarding all dock entrances as well." Restrained rage boiled in the pit of Aria's stomach, and she wasn't sure how much longer she cared to contain it.

Despite the legends, it took a lot to make Aria truly angry. In the past century, she'd only gotten angry three times. Once, twenty years ago, when a lover walked out on her, and twice in the last four months.

Cerberus had murdered her daughter. It didn't take her long to find the one responsible and skin him alive. Slowly. Over the course of a month.

This time, however, it wasn't just a personal, horrifying and painful ordeal. It was a calculated play designed to make her appear weak in a very public and embarrassing way. Someone wanted a massive shift in the balance of power.

Her apartment was bombed, most of her personal guard were dead, and she'd have been shredded like paper if not for Shepard's intervention. Most of all, she was beaten, badly, by some mutant freak because whoever planned this knew her methodology and tactics to her very core. Lyrali, as stupid as the name was, appeared just dumb enough to lower her guard and not question why her security team was gone.

Soon, the entire station would believe that she had lost control, and was no longer invincible. Above all else, that wasn't something Aria could abide. She was in control, she had always been in control, and nothing, not even the Citadel itself, could change that.

Aria had no idea who was behind this public insult, or even what she'd had in her head that could've possibly been so important, but there were two things she knew with absolute certainty.

She was angry, and someone had just fucked with her.

Aria snarled, scowling at her technicians. "Do we have a visual on Shepard, yet?", she asked curtly. The human had saved her life, but then she'd just vanished. There'd been scattered reports of some sort of insane fight across rooftops, but none of her cameras had caught anything about it.

An overhead camera feed of Shepard, looking torn to hell, wading her way through car wrecks with her partner Zaeed appeared on the main display. Aria looked up, curiously. "...what are you doing, Shepard?" She turned to Bray. "Are those fresh wrecks? I seem to recall we cleaned most of them up last month…"

"We did, and they are. At least seventy skycars went down about an hour after the bombing. Apparently some idiot flew straight through the nexus. And lived.

Aria scowled. "Of course they did…" Her eyes lit up as a very well armored asari crawled out of a burning wreck and vomited on the street, some distance away from the human duo. The armored asari stared at the sky, her lips moving slightly. "Is the asari transmitting, or just talking?"

A salarian tech shook his head. "Negative, nothing we can hear, ma'am."

Aria frowned, but continued to watch the feed. The lack of audio was always frustrating, but it was the safest way to handle problems while still maintaining her public presence. Besides, people were often more worried about others may hear, not what they might see. Eventually, Shepard and Zaeed cornered the asari. The human woman tapped something on her belt, clearly addressing attention to it. "What did she just poke? Zoom in."

The screen focused on Shepard's belt, revealing the unmistakable design of a grey box. Aria's eyes widened. "Well. Isn't that interesting." She'd thought the plan had failed with Lyrali's death, but that greybox changed everything. As for why Shepard had it, she couldn't say, but she looked half dead, so it was more than likely that this asari was trying to take it from the body.

Bray cursed to himself. "...guess we really do have more to deal with than those super-vorcha…"

Aria half turned toward to Bray, brow raised. "...what?"

"It can wait."

Aria shrugged and turned her attention back to the screen. Shepard, instead of shooting her dead, froze. Her face went pale and then screamed at Zaeed. They took off in the skycar, the asari in the backseat, and out of range for the stationary cameras.

"I don't like this." Aria furrowed her brow and clenched her jaw. "Jam all outbound comms, station wide. I don't want a single signal leaving Omega unless I personally approve it." The pirate queen sighed as Anto returned with her food, a plate of finely prepared varren kebabs. "Finally.", she said before tearing into the meat like a starving krogan, shoving kebabs down her throat in a way that was somehow both elegant and brutal.

Anto and Bray looked between one another, clearly impressed. "...how the hell did you learn to eat like that?", chuckled Bray.

"It's a gift." Aria handed the tray back to Anto and turned to Bray, grinning maliciously. "...so, what's this about super-vorcha?"

-(|)-

Several matte, teal warheads rolled into the back from under the front seat of the skycar, quickly followed by a collapsed ML-22 Launcher. They explosives and launcher repeatedly bumped into each other with sharp scrapes of metal thanks to skycar's rather excessive maneuvering. Several trickles of purple blood seeped over the already stained leather upholstery and on to the floor, quickly finding it's way to the warheads themselves. Now, each time they scuffed another's enclosure, the spectre's blood was passed from one to the other.

From the back seat, Vasir knew that those high explosives wouldn't actually go off unless armed properly, but that didn't make the sight any less stressful. The odd and delirious idea that they were exchanging her blood for killing rights was even more disconcerting.

"...which is exactly why we have these ML-22s under the seats.", grumbled Zaeed as he continued to stare at the floating parking lot of traffic that had manifested around them. "...so we can blow our way out of guddamn gridlocks like this…"

Shepard covered her face with her palm. "No, we're not doing that."

"Why the hell not? Just a few warning shots-"

"Are you shitting me, Zaeed?!" Shepard railed at him, her blue-grey eyes blazing with fury. "No! You just killed about fifty people in that fucking stunt through the Nexus! How many more people have to die today because they happened to be driving?!"

"How the hell should I know?! As many as it takes for the half-dead spectre in the backseat not to bleed out on the upholstery!", the grizzled mercenary screamed in response.

Shepard groaned, exasperated. "Oh my God! How is it always about your goddamn car?! You get that hole in our ceiling installed-"

"It's a retractable one-way mirrored skylight! It's fucking brilliant and lets us come and go without getting hit in the ass with rockets!"

"ROCKETS BLOW UP WALLS! WE DON'T HAVE ECM DEFENSES FOR THE EXTERIOR, ZAEED!", roared Shepard, her face turning red in anger.

"We don't fucking need those, I told you that! We can just reinforce the walls with cruiser armor! I know a guy-"

"OH! Of course, how could I forget?" Shepard rolled her eyes and fell back in her seat. "You know a guy who can get it 'on the cheap'! This the same guy who got me that wrist-mounted flamethrower that had a little backblast problem?"

Zaeed grumbled and glared at the traffic around them. "No! He died last month! This guy is the one who got you your fucking...black power suit thing The one with the eezo endoskeleton that you just had to have! So maybe show some guddamn gratitude, alright?!"

Vasir groaned from the back, feeling as though her ears were bleeding. "By the Goddess, will you two bonded idiots just shut the hell up?!" There was going to be a point where, if this continued, she'd just jump out of the skycar and fall to her death. Listening to those two bicker was a fate worse than death, especially when she was already slowly dying right behind them.

Both Shepard and Zaeed turned around and, in unison, screamed: "WE'RE NOT MARRIED!"

Vasir raised her brows and chuckled. "Of course not." Either they were lying, or were just the most naturally argumentative people she'd ever met.

"Both of you can shut up, I'm listening to some music." Zaeed clicked on the radio, only to find the frequency filled with static. "Huh." He switched between every single one of his favorite stations, many of them from old Earth and the turian equivalent to heavy metal, only to find them all facing a similar fate. "The hell is going on?"

In fact, the only working frequency he could find was the one that spewed that mad batarian's prophet's religious propaganda. "Oh, this is just terrific. Stuck in traffic, and all we've got to listen to are these fucking rants!"

"_...the purge is coming! The great fires will cleanse this station and beyond, making a new, pure galaxy! There is no refuge from the coming storm, my brothers and sisters. Only those who survive! Those who survive the Hunt will be forged together by blood and iron!"_

"I hate that guy." Shepard frowned and turned off the radio. "He called me a blight."

"He calls everyone a blight." Zaeed rolled his eyes. "No, that's it. I'm guddman done with this traffic. If we can't use rockets…" He looked over at Shepard, trying one last time to make it seem like a good idea.

"No."

"...then we'll just ram our way out."

"Oh." Shepard widened her eyes. "Let's not do that. I don't want to fall out of the sky."

Ignoring her, Zaeed surged the skycar forward and into the least meaty part of traffic. He repeatedly crashed the front of the car into each and every other motorist in his way until, somehow, they made a hole and allowed him through. The damage to the front bumper got even worse, and Vasir wasn't sure how much more it could take before it broke something important in the engine.

It took a full minute for Zaeed to demand comeuppance.

Zaeed smiled smugly. "You don't know shit about traffic, do you Shepard?"

"Shut up and drive, Massani.", grumbled Shepard as she looked out the window. "Ok, there's the clinic." She pointed it out among the buildings below. "Zaeed, bring us in fast and hot. Vasir can't wait for slow and steady."

"Roger that…", he said, as he pulled the skycar in for a hot landing, screeching toward the clinic's landing pad. He patted the dashboard lovingly, as a father would a son. " Alright, Jayne, keep yourself together. We've been in worse spots than this. The seats may be ruined, but I swear, if you pull this off, I'm getting you some good guddamn leather this time. No more of that cheap elcor shit."

Vasir, whose skin was now several shades paler, struggled to raise her head from her prone position in the back. "...who the the fuck is Jayne. I…" Her eyes glazed over for a moment before the spectre shook it off. "...thought your name was Karen..." The asari's face slumped back into the cushions, keeping one eye still glaring at the two in the front seats.

"It is. He's talking to the car. It's always about the car..." Shepard looked over her shoulder and grimaced at Vasir's weakening state. "...hold on to something if you can, this is gonna get bumpy." She furrowed her brow and reached behind her, quickly strapping Vasir into the car using the cargo harness despite her violent fidgeting. "...this also works."

"Fuck you." Vasir scowled at Shepard, not too keen at being tied up. She clenched her jaw. "Fuck the both of you."

"I know, and I'm sorry." Shepard frowned apologetically and gripped the center divider, not having a safety harness of her own for reasons Zaeed could only explain with grunts and shrugs. She tapped her omni-tool and opened a line to the clinic's secured, high-priority channel.

"Green Eyes", said Shepard. Her and Zaeed had established a 'shit's hit the fan' call/response code with the clinic months earlier, after Zaeed had somehow survived a very large hole in his stomach. A considerable amount of Shepard's shares gained from their freelance work had gone to help fund the clinic, so she thought she was entitled to a few small bits of special treatment now and then.

The voice of an overworked turian woman came through. "_Black Blood. Welcome back, Shepard_. _Standing by for Medevac arrival. ETA?"_

"Two minutes. Matron in critical condition. Extensive internal wounds to chest, legs, and abdomen."

"_Got it. Dr. Ceres is prepping for surgery now."_

Shepard killed the line and and took a quick breath. "Ok, here we go!"

Zaeed nodded, his focus entirely the task at hand. "Guddamn right." He opened the throttle, reversed the rear jets and went for a hard burn. The undercarriage thrusters heated the clinic's prefabbed metal roof red as he pushed the drive-core to it's limit. The skycar shuddered as the compensators struggled to react to the rapid change in speed, direction and mass.

Vasir slurred as she was bounced around in the harness. "...where...the fuck did you learn how...to drive?"

"You don't survive this long without learning how to drive really guddamn well, lady!"

The front bumper, which was already a mangled mess from it's recent spectre hit-and-run and bulldozing traffic escape, hit the ground first, sending sparks flying across the windshield and airframe as the blue skycar skidded to a stop just in front of the awaiting medical team.

The sudden, jerking stop of the vehicle shook Vasir's already weakened body. Her head throbbed even more as the void quickly began eat away the corners of her vision. She tried to say something, but her mind was already gone. She slumped over in the harness, her form relaxing, as she finally, mercifully, lost consciousness.

-(|)-

"Let's move!" Shepard popped the doors and trunk, the rear door swinging upward as it opened. She hoisted herself out of the skycar to see the medical staff swiftly removing Vasir, who had finally lost consciousness, from the car and placing her on a gurney. Zaeed cursed a slew of creative and explicit racial slurs as he stuffed the warheads back where they belonged. They sprinted off into the emergency lift and the elevator door slammed shut behind them.

The elevator was cramped, bright, and ancient. It slowly crawled it's way down to the clinic's main floor, shuddering slightly every few seconds. Either there was a war outside, or this thing was literally going to fall apart.

Shepard wasn't really a fan of either.

One of the medical techs, a tall, oddly well-built woman with black hair done up in a messy bun gave Shepard a thorough up-and-down. She had deep, almost enthralling, blue eyes and looked far too pretty for her job.

Shepard raised her brow, challenging her with a delirious giggle. "You the type that likes 'damaged women'? Ooh, okay, tell me, is it the tattered clothing, the broken wrist, or the giant gash on my forehead that's doing it for you?"

The woman grinned, staring at Shepard's abdomen. "Actually, it was the muscle tone."

"Wow." Shepard chuckled, feeling very light headed, even managed a smile. "Good eye, but bad timing. I'm pretty high on painkillers."

Zaeed looked at the dark haired woman with a very bemused expression. "Aren't you supposed to be doing something? Like helping that asari?"

The woman cleared her throat and returned to her post, assisting with the removal of the asari's rather expensive armor. Zaeed scoffed and crossed his arms, leaning against the back wall of the elevator. "...bloody unprofessional is what that was…"

Shepard rolled her eyes. "...true, but that wasn't very nice…"

Dr. Inaara Ceres, the asari surgeon who'd patched both Shepard and Zaeed up on numerous occasions, had been inspecting Vasir's weakened body by hand. She was tall, slender, and had pale purple skin with deep black facial markings. "Somehow, I'd have thought that Aria's apartment blowing up would have dropped the both of you." She glared at both humans with a stern expression. "You two ever consider that I might not like cleaning up after you all the time?" Dr. Ceres sighed, exasperated, and began typing in her omni-tool. "Idiots. Just give me her name so I can cut her open, sew her back up, and kick all three of your asses back onto the street."

Shepard rolled her eyes and made a non-threatening cutting motion just under her chin. "No idea what her name is. Just found her on that same street you seem so excited to kick her back onto."

Dr. Ceres stared at Shepard for a long moment. "Never easy with you, is it?" She shook her head dismissively and typed into her omni-tool. "Fine. Good samaritans, medevac, blah blah blah, unidentified asari. Critical condition."

Shepard held her tongue and nodded in appreciation. "Thanks for the help, Dr. Ceres."

Dr. Ceres looked up, paused, and snickered condescendingly. "Help? Help is what you do when someone loses their omni-tool. This is more like divine intervention. Hold on, let me explain exactly what it is I'm 'helping' you with." She snatched the datapad out of the dark haired lab tech's hands and tapped the screen. "Severe internal tissue damage due to armor plating splintering into chest. A big, obvious hole in her stomach, third degree burns across her legs, arms and chest. Multiple stab wounds from an…" The doctor frowned. "...anti-krogan knife. Internal bleeding, organ damage…" The asari glared at Shepard, as Zaeed had already moved on from the conversation and was now trying, and failing, to check his extranet mail.. "For your sake, I hope she's worth it. Time isn't a fucking luxury today, so everyone who dies out here waiting for me to finish up is on you."

The medical team surged out of the elevator as soon it opened into the central hub of the clinic, vanishing into the maddening sea of people that flooded the area. Nurses and doctors in white splashed with red, purple, yellow and blue, raced from patient to patient, and blaring alarms of monitoring systems failing filled the room. No less than a dozen crash carts made their way through traffic so thick it made the Nexus look easy. The bright, white lights only made the sheer saturated suffering of the wounded and dying all the more unsettling.

Shepard and Zaeed were practically regulars of Gozu, and not once had they seen the clinic overworked to this level of insanity. It was as if the chaotic turn their lives had just dragged the entire station along with it. Shepard gaped, her own injuries seeming meaningless in the wake of all of the stabbings, gunshot wounds and severe burns that clouded her vision.

"...holy shit…", muttered Shepard, nearly at a loss for words.

-(|)-

Dr. Inaara Ceres held onto the gurney as she and her team raced down the long, repurposed hallway toward the central operating room. Those two mercenary morons came in every so often to get some insane injury healed, and always had an anecdote or two about how it got there, and why it was the other one's fault. Inaara was starting to get very tired of their repetitive bullshit.

That is, until Shepard and Zaeed had hauled in a mostly dead asari matron with some of the most advanced equipment lodged in her flesh that Inaara had ever seen. Now, she rather missed the pair's ludicrous monotony, because today was a perfect storm of worrying things.

Someone made a play for Aria, so naturally the factions of Omega made plays for everyone else. It was open season, and nobody was safe from the crossfire of the sniveling Suns or the whiny Talons.

The medical team burst through the large steel doors of the operations chamber as an asari nurse scrambled to gather a set of surgical tools that weren't already in use by the many other ER teams. She laid them out on a dolly as the dark haired woman read through a final checklist of their needed instruments. Two salarian assistants sealed the doors behind them and jogged back to the center of the room.

Inaara activated the decontamination protocols and slipped on a surgical mask while the rest of the medical staff did the same. Aerosol-based cleansers entered the room through ceiling and floor vents. The asari doctor nodded toward her team, and they, after counting to three, transferred the spectre to the operating table. They began to prep her for surgery, as Inaara slipped on a fresh pair of blue latex gloves, the coloring she always found humorously redundant for asari, and adjusted the overhead lighting. Under the extreme light, something odd caught her eye.

It looked like a manufacturing label, but burnt into the asari's chest. Inaara furrowed her brow and took a closer look. "...Spectre Armory…?" Inaara snarled and bowed her head. "...by the Goddess, Shepard, I am going to wring your fucking throat for putting this on me."

The asari doctor looked up at her medical team, and waved off their worry. "She's a spectre. Nobody's had greasy fingers before, so nobody better start. It would be very, very bad if she died on this station, alright? Let me put it this way." She stared straight into their eyes, one by one. Two of them, the asari and a dark haired human female, she didn't recognize, but they were in scrubs so Solus had probably called in some temporary help. "If she dies, I will personally kill each and every one of you for premeditated malpractice. Are we clear?"

"Perfectly, ma'am.", said the dark haired woman.

Inaara stared at the two she didn't recognize, her silver eyes going dark. "...you two. I don't see nametags. What clinic are you normally working in, and who's your attending surgeon?"

The dark haired woman cleared her throat. "Alice Calloway. I answered an open call for nursing staff. I've had formal medical training with the Systems Alliance, but I've not assisted in surgery for a few years. If-"

"Shut up, good enough." Inaara turned to the asari. "You?"

The asari nurse blinked. "Serria T'Jeera, serving under Lyrali T'Koma at the Ikina District Clinic."

Inaara gave Serria a stern look, flattening her lips in a thin line.. "There's no Lyrali T'Koma operating in Ikina, or on Omega for that matter. Mostly because it's the name we give to asari we can't identify." She pointed to the spectre. "Like this one, as you can see by the datapad you're holding. So get the hell out of my operating room before I break that 'do no harm' oath I keep forgetting to renew."

"...fuck." The asari called Serria bit her lip and looked between the staff. "Well, they never said I had to be subtle." She snatched up the spectre's discarded sidearm, and instantly fired a slew of superheated polonium rounds that melted through five of the medical team, burning them from the inside out, and slammed a warp field into a turian nurse, nearly vaporizing him entirely.

Alice had, oddly enough, played dead before the asari had even started firing.

Inaara's eyes widened as she brought up her own barrier, despite knowing it wouldn't stop the specialized ammunition that weapon was spewing. Serria had killed all but one of her team almost faster than she could blink. The asari doctor's old mask fell into place, one of boredom and indifference. "You're a terrible assassin, kid."

"Really." Serria laughed and leveled her weapon at the good doctor. "Indulge me. Why?"

"You stopped firing your weapon."

Alice's bright, searing omni-blade burst out of Serria's chest, forcing her to drop the gun as she writhed in agony. "Bloody maniac!" The dark haired woman viciously snapped the asari's neck, stopping all resistance. The asari's body fell to the ground, her gaping chest wound cauterized and black as the void.

Inaara stared blankly at the dead assassin. "You also missed one."

Alice detached her omni-blade, leaving it boiling in the fallen asari. She stared at her kill with a calculating look. "I wasn't fast enough, and your team died for it." The dark haired woman looked at Inaara with a flicker of guilt. "I'm sorry for your loss." She sighed, letting much of her tension go. "But there will be time for mourning later. Right now, we need to focus on making sure the spectre lives."

Inaara frowned, very unamused. "I already said that, Calloway. Then someone got blood on my floor." The doctor waved her off and moved the tool dolley closer to the operating table. "Either you're qualified to assist, or, I can't believe how often I have to say this today, get the hell out of my operating room. I can get angry about whatever the hell is going on later."

"Good attitude, doctor. I'm impressed." The dark haired woman chuckled and methodically re-arranged the surgical tools on the dolley.

"Wonderful. Does that impressed sensibility have a real name, too?" She gestured flippantly to very visible omni-blade sticking out of the asari's gut. "Or does every retired nurse just carry one of those things around?"

"...you continue to impress me, Doctor." The dark haired woman nodded. "Lawson." She wiped red, purple and blue blood off of the monitoring devices. "...though I am actually trained in field surgery. I haven't done so in a few years, but my memory isn't the least bit spotty. It's damned near perfect, in fact."

"Lawson. I said your name was a lie, not your whole life story." Inaara sighed, pushing away her feelings of grief toward the many dead on the ground. "Let's hope you're not bullshitting me. I'm not losing her after all of that. Clear?"

"Perfectly."

"Good." The doctor shot Lawson a look of absolute authority. "Scalpel."

-(|)-

"Mordin, you really didn't need to jump me to the front of the waiting list. I could wait. Compared to the others, I'm fine.", said Shepard, sitting cross legged on an observation bed, her flesh bare. The good salarian doctor was one of the few people Shepard knew that made her nudity feel comfortable, as opposed to a painful reminder of what once was. Mordin's strictly clinical, and comfortingly sympathetic, outlook on her branded sternum was why she trusted him as much as she did.

The small, yet effective, observation room was filled with charts of Shepard's medical data. Graphs, diagrams and collated data of the physical abnormalities caused by the mark on her sternum littered the space. Several datapads were strewn about on the table, detailing her current injuries.

Zaeed, realizing that he had far more important things to do than eavesdrop on a rather private consultation, had gone to keep a watchful eye over the operating room while Vasir was under the knife. They couldn't afford any more surprises today.

"Didn't put you at top. Wouldn't be a good doctor if I did. No, simply put you ahead of patients we can't save with limited resources. Also, the Hunt demands good combatants. Need you back in perfect health. Not to mention pre-established relationship due to unique condition." He looked her over and swiped his omni-tool over her body. "Hm. Broken sternum, heavy bruising, second degree burns, shattered wrist, partially collapsed windpipe and moderate concussion. Combat stims proved to be effective temporary mitigation, interesting." He blinked. "Curious, as not technically possible with baseline medical data on you, Karen."

Shepard winced at her given name, though she wasn't sure why. It felt somehow wrong, yet she couldn't exactly place the feeling. "You really don't need to address me by my given name. Zaeed doesn't even do that."

Mordin laughed. "Ridiculous. Surnames used with titles. Formal greetings. Political standing. Acquaintances!" He shook his head, black eyes blinking. "Directly contradicts pre-established human socio-cultural norms. Have helped you countless times. Healed bone, muscle and neural damage. Done extensive research into unique genetics! History! Positive reaction to unexpected arrival. Smiling universally understood as affection among all council races. Friends, not business associates." The rambling doctor smiled. "No longer military. No rank or title. Never asked, didn't need to, truth is in the data. Personality, physicality, ethics." He nodded sagely, as if that was the definitive answer to Shepard's concept of identity. "Karen suits you best."

"Fine." Shepard sighed and stared at the floor. "If it means that much to you…" She grumbles, her given name making the fire in her belly boil. "...you can call me Karen."

"Good." Mordin handed her a black, angular enclosure. "Hold still, Karen."

Shepard grabbed the enclosure and, just before she could ask what was going on, was injected through her neck and into her throat, with a quick-acting numbing agent. She felt breathless as the needle sent a perfectly calculated mass-effect pulse outward from the center of her throat, popping her windpipe back into place. Mordin discarded the needle, and swiftly injected her neck with a neutralizing agent, allowing her throat to come back from the void.

Shepard blinked and took a deep breath. "Wow." The difference was extreme, and it scared her a little that she hadn't noticed anything was wrong with her breathing. "Thanks Mordin, I didn't-" She yelped painfully as Mordin quickly reset her wrist and locked it in place with the black enclosure, a small bone regenerator. "Holy hell, Mordin! At least give me some warning before you do something like that!"

"No." He said as he picked up a larger enclosure. "Keep telling you to buy these. You never listen. Infuriating. Worrying. Frustrating.", said Mordin, as he fastened the bone regenerator onto Shepard's bare upper body. The semi-expandable enclosure wrapped around her chest and back, the faint yellow light of energy cycling back and forth across her sternum, artificially healing bone fractures by jump starting the body's natural regeneration process.

"Plenty of portable solutions! Many affordable! Here." He shoved a small bone regenerator, identical to the one on her wrist, onto a spare set of folded clothes in just her size. Shepard didn't want to know where they came from. "No charge. Sick of seeing you hurt. Ironic. Would not hurt of seeing you sick." The fast-talking salarian smiled, and Shepard had to chuckle at that.

"Yeah, I'll bet you'd have a field day with a patient who had the common cold." She grimaced as she felt her sternum begin to reform. "It was the worst, though. I felt like crap for a month."

Mordin blinked. "Teasing? No, wouldn't dare. Not like you. But also medically impossible. Disease isolated to Earth, no chance of off-world exposure thanks to decontamination procedures-" He shook his head, realizing exactly why she'd have had the common cold at all. "Ah. Moving on."

Batarian slavers had, apparently, learned a thing or two from Colonial Europe's approach to 'lesser cultures' in the New World. It wasn't quite small pox, but the blankets shipped by an 'anonymous benefactor' got everyone pretty sick weeks before they hit the colony. They weren't cold, they had central heating for the winter and central air for the summer, but those blankets were just so soft.

At the time.

Shepard scratched the back of her head, frowning. "Yeah. Let's do that."

-(|)-

Zaeed was not the happiest man alive at the moment. The vending machine, the one he always used after getting himself patched up, had stolen his credit chit. He'd just wanted some tupari, but the damn can was stuck in the tube. The grizzled mercenary scowled at the machine, hoping that just his deadly gaze would convince the large metal box to rethink its stance on life.

The taunting advertisement played again. "_Spectre Kyrik drinks Tupari. Don't you want to be like Spectre Kyrik?_"

Zaeed growled and punched the machine. "No! For your information, I don't want to be like a guddamn skull-faced, bony-assed, spike-headed, battle chicken who gallivants around the galaxy like everything is his fucking business!", he screamed, ending his sentence by kicking the box with his armored boot. "Give me my fucking soda or we're going to have a problem!"

"_Twelve trillion bottles of tupari are sold in a day, where's yours? Oh that's right, it's inside me._"

Zaeed eyed the machine closely. "...I got shit to do, but when I come back, I'm gonna gut you like a pig. Nobody taunts Zaeed Massani and lives to tell about it." He jabbed his index finger at the box. "Nobody."

At that, he left the vending machine in a frustrated stomp, forcing his way back into the clinic's dangerously thick crowd. As he struggled to wade and shoulder his way through the sea of dying, dead and sick toward the operation chamber, he kept feeling more and more ridiculous. He wasn't even taller than most of them, so he felt like a lost little kid trying to find his parents in a department store, among other things.

"...feel like a fat, stupid volus in this guddamn jungle…", he grumbled, as he accidentally kicked a volus with his boot. "Oh, shit, sorry 'bout that. Didn't see you there."

The volus looked up at Zaeed, hands on his rotund hips. "Oh, so I'm not..._kshh_...fat, ugly, or…._kshh_...stupid enough to..._kshh_...notice?!"

Zaeed raised a brow, looking straight down at the uppity Volus. "...I didn't call you ugly. I've no guddamn clue what you look like under that mask. Why the hell would I do that?"

The Volus scoffed, or at least attempted too. "Yeah? Well…._kshh_...so I'm fat and…._kshh_...stupid, then?"

Zaeed nodded. "Yeah. You're a big guddman round ball who was stupid enough to assume I called him ugly and bitched at me for it." He rolled his eyes and barreled through the rest of the crowd.

"SHUT..._kshh..._UP!"

When Zaeed finally made it to the sealed operation room, it was rather easy to spot the five dead bodies and rainbow of blood on the floor through the windows. The sight of the dark haired woman from before and the asari doctor performing surgery was good, but he had no idea if they were helping her or just harvesting her organs.

The dead bodies threw assumptions out the window, so he did the only thing he could do. He looked down the other end of the dead end hallway and saw that the clinic had only gotten more chaotic and crowded. Since, clearly, gunshots weren't loud enough to pierce the sheer volume of the patient swarm, Zaeed figured a plasma torch would be even easier to hide.

"I just cannot catch a guddamn break today, now can I?", he grumbled as he activated his omni-tool's plasma torch. Zaeed looked at the window, and then the control panel, and then back at the window. "Fuck it." He shrugged and slammed the superheated stream into the panel, melting the electronics with a strong static discharge.

The sealed doors swung open, somehow, and Zaeed sprinted through them as he drew his rifle from his back. He sighted the dark haired woman as it expanded onto his arms. "You've got about two-"

The dark haired woman whirled around, bringing her pistol to bare on Zaeed. "-seconds before I melt that rifle out of your hands?" She flared her biotics, wafts of dark energy flowing over her body. "Drop the gun. You brought her in, that means we're friendlies." She made a quick gesture between them both. "Same side. Same goal."

Dr. Ceres grunted, her focus still entirely on the spectre's open chest cavity. "That goal being the survival of this spectre, a fact that you and Shepard conveniently neglected to inform me of. Oh, and if not for Lawson, everyone in this room would be dead." She wiped the sweat off of her brow. "That asari with the big, black hole in her stomach had the worst bedside manner I've ever seen, so drop your gun before I reenact her performance solely on you."

"Alright. Fine. I gotcha." Zaeed frowned and gripped his rifle tighter. "Drop yours first. I haven't done that in twenty guddamn years, and I'm not about to start now."

"Very well." Lawson sighed and did as she was told. "Seal the doors, if you can. We'd appreciate some overwatch from other idiots that like to break down doors."

"...yeah, I'll bet…" Zaeed rolled his eyes, slung his rifle and went to do just that.

-(|)-

"...peak physical health, in all categories. Even above theoretical maximums in humans, but more on that later. Now, on to more pressing matters." Mordin, having just finished her routine check-up, grabbed a chart off of the haptic display and expanded it in front of Shepard. "Injuries today were surprising. Should have died hours ago from impact trauma of asari headbutt."

Shepard rolled her eyes. "Look, I'm pretty hard to kill, I get it-"

Mordin shook his head, suddenly becoming far more serious. "No, not statistics. Probability of death. Medically impossible for baseline human skeletal structure to withstand that amount of force!" He tapped a few commands into the display, and it highlighted her neck and brain stem. "Even with highest known threshold for humans, death was absolute certainty. Neck should have shattered. Upper vertebrae snapped in half. Brain stem severed!"

Shepard stared at the image incredulously and thought back to her fight with Vasir. In full armor, and that powerful a biotic, she should've been able to kill her instantly. Probably just by squeezing her neck. "...I...don't understand. How is this possible, then?"

Mordin frowned and brought up another chart that displayed her dna, post-birth alterations labeled in red, along with a detailed diagram of the mark on her sternum and a scan of the many of latent cancerous growth all over her skeletal and muscular structure. "Batarian slaver mark is...far more effective than modern genemods. Can be. Not always. Rarely. Statistically unlikely to only benefit from sloppy nanite-based genetic rewrite. Still, increase in muscle strand density, bone strength, and overall resilience." He took a deep breath and flipped to the next screen, displaying two blood samples. "Left was taken three weeks ago. Right was taken today. 20% increase in survivability. Five years normal minimum for enhancement of this level! Far beyond Alliance genemod regulations, change itself should have killed you!"

Shepard's eyes widened. "...it's...making me stronger…?" She looked down at her sternum, the black mark a sickening reminder of where she came from. A reminder that, no matter how hard she fought or how much she accomplished, would never wash away. "That doesn't seem possible. The batarians designed those fucking things to latch onto as much genetic code as possible and force skin pigmentation to alter itself in seconds, regardless of the damage it caused to the rest of the body."

"No." Mordin shook his head. "Not making you stronger. Reactive. Parasitic. Secondary, latent purpose! Would never have detected it if not for current injuries." He spoke gravely. "Stupid for missing it. Mark spreads. Visually, physically and neurologically." The salarian doctor sighed and switched to the last display, expanding it on the wall. It was a large, real-time image of her brain activity. "Normal brain activity for humans."

"Yeah, alright. How does it spread, though?"

"Watch. After we apply external stimuli..." He pinched her arm, and she slapped his hand away. Her brain lit up, isolating several parts that she instantly recognized as behavioral centers along with her endocrine system and pituitary gland. "Pain alters behavior differently than standard reaction, along with enhancements. Subtle chemical disparity. Significantly increased testosterone production, lowered inhibitions, several unintentional effects...though none worth noting."

Shepard furrowed her brow and looked down at her sternum. "...it's supposed to make me more resilient to beatings and assist in rapid mental conditioning. The more they'd hit me, the harder I could take it, and the more powerful the lesson." She scowled at the ground and bit into the back of her lower lip. "Lowering inhibitions would give them more opportunities for abuse, and…"

"Don't dwell. Move forward." Mordin shook his head and closed the haptic windows. "Theory most likely correct. Bone growth caused by disabling key process in human skeletal reconstruction. Bone fractures heal, overcompensated. Mark prohibits bone from returning to original strength. Repeat. Muscular hypertrophy a result of increased testosterone production during pain response. Further injury will cause further enhancement. Awareness leads to new, possible exploitation of mark." He frowned. "Though, wouldn't advise. Left unchecked, muscles contract faster than nervous system coordinates. Fine control of body becomes problematic, very dangerous for biotics! Strain of constant physical enhancements will be too much for metabolism. Also, Circulatory and respiratory systems. Body can't produce enough energy, muscle and bone self-atrophy until stabilized or...death."

"Fucking terrific!" Shepard buried her head in her good hand. "Damned if I do, damned if I don't! So, what, do I just quit being a merc and try not to fall down the stairs for the rest of my life?"

The salarian doctor took a deep breath and regarded Shepard for a moment. "No. Never quit. Never give up. Life finds a way. Still, large problem that needs a temporary solution." Mordin actually paused for a moment before writing frantically into his omni-tool. "...could create rudimentary neural implant, alter pain response signals back to human baseline until better tech acquirable..." He shook his head. "...strong chance of interfering with L3n implant. Electrocution of brain not desired effect."

Shepard stared at the good doctor, internally repeating everything he'd said in the last ten minutes. "Well, it's better than what we had a minute ago. Any clue when you'll know if it won't...cook my head from the inside out?"

Mordin nodded many times as he brought up schematics of a standard L3n biotic implant. "Few days, possibly longer. Or shorter. Can't provide concrete answer. Unfamiliar with human biotic implants, will need to learn implantation procedure and pitfalls of L2 program. Can't repeat same mistake of others."

"Alright, until then, is there anything I can do to...I don't know, not kill myself?", she frowned, feeling defeated.

Mordin continued to patter into his omni-tool. "Eat. Double, possibly triple, normal daily caloric intake. Muscular growth needs more energy. Also, don't get shot! Or bruised! Duration of pain response most likely tied to physical growth. Injuries survived today could be final threshold! Hide until implant is ready. Cannot stress enough that death is absolute, not merely possibility!" He stared at her bone regenerators and narrowed his eyes. "...just now occurs to me that bone regeneration may accelerate process, coupled with consistent low level pain reactions..." Mordin shook his head a few times, looking rather frustrated.

Shepard frowned and did her best not to feel pain. It didn't work. "Maybe you should just prescribe me some painkillers for the time being. Something that dulls both the nerves and that part of the brain."

Reaching into his pack, without even looking up from his omni-tool, the salarian doctor begrudgingly handed her a pill bottle of...a drug she couldn't exactly read. "This does that. Very potent. Split in two, no, four and take one every ten hours until implant is ready. Stay well nourished or run risk of coma! Combination with combat stimulants should...produce desired effects." He frowned. "Don't like this. Dangerous. Very risky. Sadly, necessary."

"Okay, I'll do my best." Shepard bit her lip. "..so you can do that, figure this out, but you still can't get rid of this thing.", she lamented. It wasn't a question, and it hadn't been for a very long time.

Mordin blinked, closed his omni-tool and sighed. "...No. Explained this already. Reversal of branding process easy, but lack gene resequencer in clinic. Expensive, unnecessary for normal patients. Still, would take years to finish. Physical augmentations far more difficult. Skin pigmentation result of targeted retrovirus in basal skin cells that repropagate genetic modifications. Tied directly into actual reversal of bone tissue and muscular growth. Need to avoid total destruction of endocrine system, hormone balance! Requires decade of research and testing, if not more. Would be dead by then. " He shook his head. "Will not attempt procedure without near absolute certainty of success."

"I...appreciate that, I suppose." Shepard sighed heavily and hugged herself gingerly. "Thank you for...catching that, Mordin. Before it became too late." The woman smiled sadly. "What do I owe you?"

Mordin shook his head. "Nothing. Would have taken opportunity to study condition as payment, or assistance in clinic funding, or friendship. Numerous times that you and Zaeed sent message to street gangs that clinic was 'off limits' come to mind."

Shepard laughed. "You really just don't give a shit about sustainable business models, do you?"

"Never have. Won't start."

-(|)-

Shepard glared at the vending machine. After four hours of painful bone regeneration, which probably made the mark's effect even worse, and the realization that, since her clothes were destroyed, her custom weapon mounts were junked, she wasn't in the best of moods. She was unarmed, in clothes she didn't like, probably going to strengthen herself to death, and that damn vending machine just stole her credit chit. All Shepard wanted was several dozen damned chocolate energy bars. It wasn't that complicated.

The partially caved in tupari machine next to it blared another advertisement. "_Tupari! Brings your ancestors back from the grave._"

Shepard flipped off the tupari machine and refocused on the box that had wronged her. "This is bull." She kicked the machine, and much to her surprise, it actually dislodged a dozen energy bar. Shepard smiled as she ripped open the packaging. The woman took a massive bite, nearly swallowing the energy bar whole, when her omni-tool, along with every single other person's in the clinic, started blaring wildly. In fact, every single vid screen around her clicked over to an image of the Omega logo.

Shepard frowned and opened her omni-tool, only for Aria's face and voice to boom out of every screen, speaker and omni-tool. Her eyes widened in fear, and she gulped, swallowing her energy bar. "...shit..." She quickly shoved four more into her mouth, chewing with total disregard for her appearance, and proceeded to buy the rest of the machine's stock. Thankfully, Mordin had provided her with a bag for just this purpose along with plenty of stims.

"_People of Omega! Among you is a very, very dangerous asari who is personally responsible for the deaths of several dozen of my men, along with the untold civilian casualties caused by the Nexus Massacre earlier today…."_

-(|)-

Lawson and Zaeed were listening closely to the terrifying message Aria was transmitting, while Dr. Ceres continued to work diligently on the spectre despite the maddening sound of seven blaring omni-tools in the room that had yet to answer the call.

"_...earlier today. As tracking her down has proved rather difficult, I am issuing a bounty of five hundred thousand credits to anyone who can bring me her head, and one million for her alive." _

An image of Tela Vasir, just as she had exited the wreckage of her car, was displayed on the screen.

"_This is the asari in question. Now, since some of you are a bit squeamish when it comes to ardat-hunts, I thought I'd make the decision a bit easier for you…"_

"...you know, if I wasn't so sure we were fucked, I'd complain that she gave the spectre credit for causing all of those skycar accidents..."

Lawson stared at Zaeed. "...you can't be serious."

"Have you ever flown straight through two kilometers of steel and come out the other side?! Didn't guddamn think so!"

-(|)-

"_...bit easier for you. The Hunt is now reinstated. All claims to property and social standing are hereby revoked and meaningless."_

Vido Santiago, self appointed leader of the Blue Suns, looked over a very enraging cargo manifest. He violently scratched his grey stubble, as if he was trying to tear off his own skin in anger. "Tarak." Vido looked up and scowled at the large gutted batarian. "You spent one-hundred thousand credits on fucking Barracuda IFVs?!"

The massive warehouse around him was filled to the brim with over-sized shipping crates, all stamped with the Systems Alliance insignia. Several squads of Suns armed with high-powered sniper rifles acted as sentries on the catwalks above and on the roof of the building itself. A shipment this big, even if it was stupid, wasn't going to be disrupted as far as Vido was concerned.

"I know, it sounds crazy, but boss, just look at these things" Tarak motioned to his men, instructing them to open one of the crates. The huge door slid open, revealing the hulking form of an M-080 Barracuda. "They're basically tanks! Nobody else on Omega has tanks!"

"_You are no one, own nothing, and are no longer loyal to any ideal, religion, or creed! As such, every single thing on this station is up for grabs." _

"That's because no one else was stupid enough to buy them!" He whipped the manifest at the batarian's head, smacking him across the face "What the hell could we possibly use these for!?", roared Vido, his gravely voice echoing through the warehouse. "WE'RE ON A SPACE STATION BUILT OUT OF AN ASTEROID!"

Several mercenaries moved to watch the warehouse's massive vidscreen snarl and tease them, the intimidating visage of Aria a sheer force of nature that could not be ignored. The voice boomed throughout the warehouse, masking the sounds of Vido's enraged screaming.

"_Take what is yours! What you deserve! Kill those who have wronged you! Celebrate your freedom from the Citadel..."_

"I see your point." Tarak grumbled at picked the manifest up off of the floor. He turned toward the large vidscreen and narrowed all four of his eyes. "...sir, maybe we should-"

"Shut that thing off!", snapped Vido. Streams of rifle fire shattered the vidscreen, overloading it with a bright flash. "Now, Tarak…" He grabbed the batarian by his armor's collar, bringing them nose to nasal-holes. "...find me a use for these fucking tanks, or I'm going to scoop your eyes out with a ladle!"

-(|)-

Preitor Gavorn, acclaimed vorcha exterminator, stared down into the writhing vorcha pit, the mass of grotesque flesh mating with revolting speed and brutality. He gagged and looked away. "...so, as it turns out, those super-vorcha you were looking for are down in the pits. Fucking the regular vorcha."

"_...from the Citadel! Since I cannot risk this asari leaving the station, any ships attempting to leave the docks, if you are not already cut down by my army of heavy mechs, turrets, and soldiers, will either be destroyed prior to takeoff..._"

Bray poked his head over the railing and very quickly reeled back with a look of disgust. "Yeah, I can see that. Since you already managed to….well let's just say you caught them, Aria wants to know if we can use them as weapons."

Gavorn widened his eyes and jabbed his larger talon behind him. "Those things? Bray, they shredded through ten feet of solid bulkhead just to get in there. With their claws. If we don't incinerate them right now, they're going to get loose and, spirits, I have no idea how we could possibly kill a horde of something like this."

Bray crossed his arms and sighed. "...okay, clearly using them as attack varren would be a very bad idea..." He gestured toward the pit flippantly. "Alright, burn 'em. As long as I'm not the one to tell her why she doesn't have an army of those things, that is."

"_...or blown out of the sky by ground to space missiles. The station is sealed. There is no escape..."_

Gavorn shrugged and moved over to the incinerator controls. "Fine by me. The sooner these things are dead, the less we have to worry about." He tapped a few commands into the large console, sealed the large circular door over the pit, set the temperature to it's highest setting, and ignited the firestorm. "It shouldn't take long for-"

Thousands of eardrum shattering shrieks sliced through the pit's massive blast door. Alarms rang out from the incinerator control, red lights blaring as it was forcibly taken offline due to extensive internal damage. "Spirits, I think they just tore out the heating coils." Gavorn fumbled on the console, trying to restart it, when he heard a loud thump coming from below the blast door. "...Bray, do we still have cameras in the pit?", asked the turian.

"We should..." Bray opened a live feed onto his omni-tool. Innumerable vorcha, though one could barely tell they were vorcha and not some demon out of a horror vid, were completely engulfed in flames, yet still somehow mating furiously with the very dead carcasses of their fallen brothers. "...yeah, fire didn't do anything."

Gavorn looked at the screen, his vision filling with a burning horde of deep red, eight foot tall, insanely muscular vorcha with claws thicker than his rifle. "Shit."

-(|)-

"_...station is sealed. There is no escape. No place is safe."_

Shepard barrelled into the operating room, in the middle of wiping crumbs off of her face, and stopped short once she saw the heap of bodies and pool of blood on the floor, along with the dark haired woman from the elevator bent over the spectre's body. She flicked her wrist, expecting a cut-down pistol to eject into her palm, only for the small mechanism to click repeatedly as it tried to reveal a weapon that wasn't there. "...right, crap."

Before she could dive out of the way or use her biotics, Zaeed grabbed her shoulder. "Nah, she's friendly. Sort of." He shrugged. "Enough that we don't have to shoot her, at least."

Lawson rolled her eyes. "I'm honored, really." She nodded at Shepard. "Miranda Lawson. I'd shake your hand but I'm currently indisposed." Lawson turned her focus back to the spectre and huffed. "Spectres are a bit more important than introductions at the moment."

"_No one enters! No one leaves!" _

"Karen Shepard." Shepard pinched the bridge of her nose. "And how exactly did word get out that about that? Also who killed all these people?!"

"Asari with the black hole in her chest killed my team, and then Lawson killed her." Dr. Ceres cut her off, clearly tired physically and of their constant talking. "Oh, and that Spectre Armory manufacturing label burned into her skin was very hard to miss. Information like that should really be given to medical personnel." She grunted, her jaw tightening. "Because apparently, I was the only one who didn't know who she was." Dr. Ceres scowled intensely as she began stitching the spectre back together.

"Operational security, Doctor. Didn't want to let anyone else in if I didn't have to." Shepard furrowed her brow and walked over to the aforementioned asari, her shoes tracking partially dried blood across the floor. She salvaged the spectre's sidearm where it had fallen and clasped it to her belt. "Alright, seeing as how Aria has just-"

"_Until I have the asari in my possession, dead or alive, Omega will remain a state of total anarchy!"_

"...well, yes, done that…" Shepard rose to her feet and stared at the ceiling as if to ask "why me?", before shielding her eyes from the overly bright lights.

"Smooth.", snickered Zaeed.

"Shove it.", she snapped back. "Look, the way I see it, Aria would've called Zaeed and I out directly if she thought we crossed her, which we technically didn't. Most likely, she thinks we're dead. As for you two..." She looked over at Lawson and the good doctor. "Dr. Ceres has never bullshitted us, and I can't imagine she'd want all of those hours she just spent in surgery to mean nothing. Her, we can trust." She tossed the greybox on her belt to Zaeed, who caught it and pocketed it into one of his armored packs. "Lawson, though, you're a bit of a wild card."

"Really." Dr. Ceres shot Shepard a disdainful look. "So she flirts with you, saves the spectre's life, not to mention my own, and her character is still suspect."

"_Let the hunt begin!". _With that, the transmission finally ended, and the four of them shared a collective sigh of relief.

"Fair point." Shepard crossed her arms and stared at Lawson, taking a few steps closer. "Though one has to wonder why a biotic with such excellent control over her barrier fields is doing surgical work on Omega." She tilted her head, waiting for an answer.

Sensing biotics in others was an ability that all biotics shared, and not a day went by that Shepard wasn't thankful for that. Knowing the difference between a krogan and a battlemaster before the fight even started had proven very useful over the years.

Lawson chuckled. "...I'll make you a deal. We get her out of here alive, despite that asari's ramblings, somewhere safe, and you'll get your answers. Though I'd like a few of my own, as well." She removed her latex gloves and tossed them in the wastebin. "Especially since I heard you were dead, Shepard."

"What?" Shepard raised a brow as the dark haired woman removed her surgical mask. She had no idea what Lawson was talking about. "Clearly, rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated." She blinked, refocusing. "We can deal with who heard what from who, and who's heard of who, later. Right now, we need transport, and ours is probably dead metal right now."

"Don't remind me." .Zaeed scowled. "Here's an idea, mix things up a bit." He shrugged and drew his rifle, letting it hang lazily from his arm. "Why not just try shooting our way out?"

Lawson shot a paralyzing look at the grizzled mercenary. "Shooting your way out. Through an overcrowded medical clinic." She ripped off her scrubs, revealing very drab and unremarkable civilian wear. "I've a better idea, involving my skycar that's parked a few blocks away and no civilian casualties."

Shepard nodded. "Seconded." She turned to Dr. Ceres, who was now removing her own gloves and mask. "Is she gonna make it?"

Dr. Ceres gave Shepard a hard look. "How should I know? I'm not a damn psychic."

"Fine. When would it be safe to move her?"

"Few days, at least. But, as that's clearly not an option, now should be fine."

"Alright." Shepard nodded. her mind racing through the situation for a method of escape that wasn't certain death. "Everyone on the station knows her face, so…" She furrowed her brow, reached onto the surgical dolley, and tossed Lawson a roll of gauze and medical tape. "If anyone asks, she has horrific burns all over her head and can't speak. Then, we slip her into a hospital gown and roll her out in a wheelchair. "

Shepard turned to the grizzled mercenary. "Zaeed, you get back up to the roof and provide overwatch with the rockets and sniper fire." She tapped a few commands into her omni-tool and sent her comm frequency to both Dr. Ceres and Lawson. "Keep in radio contact."

"Gladly." Zaeed slung his rifle and sprinted out of the operating room, his heavy boots slamming against the smooth metal floor.

Lawson began wrapping the spectre's head in gauze and looked up at Dr. Ceres. "It might be a good idea to bring along a medical bag, too. Just in case we need to open her up again."

Dr. Ceres nodded begrudgingly. "...was about to suggest it." She grabbed volus-sized body bag off a nearby stack and began to methodically filly it with surgical instruments, medications and other medical supplies.

Shepard snatched up a hospital gown and clasped it around the spectre's bare form. "Once he gets up there, Lawson and I are going to escort you and the spectre to the skycar."

"_Halfway up the stairs. Elevator is dead."_

Lawson finished concealing the spectre's head and looked at the damaged and shredded pieces of her armor on the neighboring table. "What about her armor? It's bound to have more links to the spectres, and anyone with half a brain will know it's not ordinary equipment."

"Damnit. I forgot about that." Shepard frowned and grabbed her own volus-sized body bag, loading the bits and pieces of armor into it, along with her rather large cache of energy bars and stimulants. "Okay, I'll carry the armor, and all this food. And stims. Don't ask. Lawson-"

Miranda cleared her throat. "Miranda is fine, thank you."

Shepard looked the woman over and slowly nodded. "Alright, Miranda. You carry the medical supplies, but all three of us need to be ready to bubble up in case somebody gets uppity in the street." She slung the bag over her shoulder and crooked her lips to the side. "For all we know, it could already be total chaos out there."

"_...Let me tell you something, Shepard…."_

-(|)-

Zaeed stared at the madness around him, hoisting the rocket launcher onto his shoulder. "I've survived some guddamn crazy shit in my life…"

The muddy red sky of Omega was alight with blinding drive-core detonations, burning transports and a constant stream of GTS missile fire. A swarm of gunships, fighters, and jury-rigged skycars were caught in a hundred separate dogfights. Rockets slammed into thrusters, rotary cannons tore through thin, luxury sports car armor like butter and a dozen fighters were impaled by stray bulks of shrapnel. Molten metal rained from above, slicing into the city below.

"I've set entire jungles on fire…"

Several squads of Eclipse mercenaries burst out onto the roof of a building several blocks away, running for their lives as enormous red vorcha erupted out of the floor and massacred them with startling ease and bloodlust. Flamethrower units flanked them, but the napalm did nothing to slow them down. It only made them shriek, the agonizing sound so loud that it shattered several blocks worth of windows, including those in Zaeed's skycar. The red demons slaughtered the rest of the mercs, their brightly burning bodies making them all the more menacing.

"...crashed a pirate fleet into a moon…"

A batarian slave barge screeched through the air as it made a hard turn. It launched a hyper-magnetized mass-effect net at a group of passing shuttles, crushing them very close together. The ship retracted the net into the cargo bay just as a fleet of drones carrying heavy mechs passed above it. Two YMIR mechs were hot dropped onto the top of the hull and quickly began ripping apart the agile craft's minimal armor and vital systems. The ship hurtled into a large apartment complex a kilometer away, it's unshielded drive-core ripping the building off it's foundation and crushing several smaller ones around it.

"...and even got shot in the head..."

Barracuda IFVs blasted straight through walls and onto the street. The deafening echo of their main cannons rang out in sequence as they fired upon the advancing armies of Blood Pack krogan. A battlemaster roared, transforming into an improvised cannonball as he dove into a biotic charge, toppling the front most tank on impact. His brothers followed suit, each krogan biotic devastating tank after tank as their bloodraged laughter bellowed through the district.

"...but I have never seen anything quite like this."

-(|)-

**A/N: Yeah, shit just got real-er. **

**Fun Fact: Dr. Inaara Ceres is voiced by Catherine Kidd, channeling Netanya Keitner**

**Also, thanks for the feedback on my questions last time. Turns out my instincts were right on the money, since it really does make the story flow better if I cut out all the crap. If you've got some random thoughts or criticisms, I'd love to hear 'em. :D**


	3. Misdirected Misconceptions

**A/N: Thanks for all the continued support, you guys/gals/hanar! Sorry this one took so long, but I had a serious case of writer's block that was only exacerbated by my vacation. Classes, ironically, start up again tomorrow, so I should be more productive. **

**The following work was beta'd by BSG-Legacy and my new second beta, the fantastic MeganD! Now they split the credit, so each of them gets 25%. Also the blame.**

**If you're unfamiliar with the M-080 IFV, I'd suggest checking the Mass Effect wikia for an image and some lore. It lacks a proper name, so I'm calling it the Barracuda. The Alliance goes from Bear to ? to Shark to another Shark, so why not? **

**For those that may be confused, I went back and retconned the Grizzly tanks from Chapter 2, because they're stupid, to the M-080 Barracuda. **

**As always, Bioware owns lots of things, etc.**

-(|)-

Rolan Quarn was beginning to realize that 'joining' the Blue Suns may not have been the wisest choice. Their soldiers were capable, but the turian con artist had learned first hand that the leadership was anything but. Most orders were relayed by Santiago himself in the form of screaming through their radios. It was inefficient and tactless, two things that Rolan simply couldn't stand.

As his team's M-080 Barracuda IFV rolled along the cracked, prefabbed streets of Gozu, the passenger cabin rattled and shook violently. His newly acquired Blue Suns armor scuffed and scraped against the two bulky batarians sitting next to him. They didn't seem too bothered by it.

"Alright, men.", grunted the team's human male commander. He stood up and awkwardly shoved his way to the front of the cramped passenger compartment, his Blue Suns armor clunking and scraping against the other mercs. He grabbed a handhold on the ceiling and grinned at his team. "Santiago wants the rest of the 1st Armored to secure Gozu, so that's what we're gonna do. That means blowing the crap out of anyone, and anything that may more may not be krogan, red vorcha, or whatever other kinds of hell we find out here. Questions?"

Rolan balked internally. Calling it the '1st Armored' was so apt he nearly laughed. The Blue Suns had never had armored ground vehicles before, and so far they hadn't exactly performed like a fleet of IFVs should. "Sir, it was my understanding that the Suns had a strict, conventional command structure. Dare I ask why the CEO, Founder, CFO, COO, and Chairman of our company is micromanaging us like an over-stimmed volus?"

The rest of the squad, including the commander, laughed at that. "No clue, Sandoras.", said the Commander, addressing Rolan by one of the long, long list of go-to personas he kept on hand. "If I had to guess, I'd say stress. Someone should really lace his coffee with Eximo, I swear..."

Eximo, besides being a non-addictive narcotic used to treat stress in humans, was one of Rolan's favorite tools for grifting the galaxy's newest race. Using just the right dosage, a typical human becomes far more open to suggestion. Walking away with a few hundred thousand credits legally wired to a series of banks across Citadel space was a personal favorite of his.

For now, though, Rolan chose to wait. If he could stick close to the Suns long enough to find another, more suitable, method of survival, then there was nothing to worry about.

If he could break out of C-SEC custody and the Citadel itself undetected, escaping Omega was going to be child's play.

-(|)-

Shepard bit her lower lip, slightly distraught at the level she'd had to stoop to just in order to survive. The clinic's morgue was filled to the brim with the pungent stench of death, embalming fluid, and corpses both uncovered and not. The tightly packed room was uncomfortably cold, and the woman was positive that the shivers that traveled down her spine weren't because of the temperature.

As long as her military career had been, she'd never once gotten used to the sight of dead civilians. Looting them for weapons and equipment, however, was even more unsettling.

"Found another few thermal clips, and...a Predator", said Miranda, crouching over her half of the morgue. She sanitized the blue blood stained equipment and carefully loaded them into their makeshift gun bag. "So far, that's ten pistols and more than enough thermal clips. We're going to have to sacrifice quality over quantity, I think. I doubt we'll find anything more than basic Elkoss gear."

Dr. Ceres stood by the door, keeping her eyes affixed through the windows. "They're for self defense, not a war.", she said quietly. The good doctor hadn't taken a single glance at their pillaging, and as such had elected to simply serve as the lookout in case one of her colleagues came to deliver more lost souls. Her hands firmly gripped Vasir's wheelchair, whose head was now encased in gauze and medical tape. "Hurry it up, you two. You're already pushing the boundaries of my ethics as it is."

As Shepard patted down the last of her several dozen cadavers for salvage, she couldn't help but feel dirty. "...you and me both.", she lamented. Taking fallen weapons from mercenaries was one thing, but doing the same from civilians, no matter how relatively innocent they might be, just felt like stealing. Mercs knew the risks, and it was either her or them. The victims here weren't even involved.

Zaeed's grizzled voice cracked in over their comm. "_We've got armor headed our way. Barracuda IFV! Looks like it's alone! Five minutes out!"_

"Shit.", grunted Shepard, standing up from the bodies as she stuffed a handful of thermal clips into her pockets. "Miranda, we're done here. You're carrying the guns." The woman swiftly zipped up the makeshift gun bag and brought the medical supply bag over to Dr. Ceres, who promptly secured it to the back of the wheelchair.

Miranda nodded and pulled the gun bag over her shoulder. "Alright, but if that IFV's about, we can't make it to my skycar on foot.", she said, confirming her machine pistols were secured. "Since yours is dead metal…"

"_Wouldn't suggest moving by air, anyway. The sky is one big clusterfuck_, _and it doesn't look like that's going to die down anytime soon. Rooftops and windows are clear, so's the area around us."_

"What about the battlemasters and the red vorcha?", asked Shepard.

"_Guddamn idiots must've killed each other off. It's just bodies out there."_

"Then escaping just moved up from impossible to suicidal." Shepard tightened the strap of the food, stims and shattered armor bag on her back. "Ok, so Miranda's skycar is a no-go, and there's no way we can make the journey on foot without running into more mercs or, God forbid, the red vorcha. Zaeed, can you slow down the IFV?"

"_If by slow it down, you mean get myself killed by it's big guddamn turret after it tracks where those rockets keep coming from, then yeah I can slow it to a fat, stupid, ugly, stop.", _he said, his words drenched in sarcasm.

The woman scratched her forehead. "Uh, ok. I take it you're not in the mood for a little impromptu martyrdom?", she said, frowning.

"_Not really, no_."

Shepard rolled her eyes. "'Course you're not.", she said, pinching her brow. "Fuck it."

"_Something stupid?"_

"Yeah. Something stupid._"_, lamented Shepard.

Dr. Ceres turned and scowled at the woman. "Is that really your best option? Something stupid? Wonderful."

"Hey, I'm open to feedback and suggestions, here.", defended Shepard. "And it's not so much stupid as it is risky. We need transport, and an armored vehicle is exactly what we need right now." The woman huffed. "Look, I know what I'm doing! We just steal the damn thing and haul ass!"

Miranda furrowed her brow and moved over to the other woman. "...a hijacking? Not impossible, but we'd need to force them to stop and not use the turret before it tears us apart."

Shepard nodded. "Not only that, but we need them to deploy out of the back, as as well getting the driver to expose himself. Barracudas are heavy, handle like a cinderblock and built like tanks. Cracking their armor without killing Zaeed, according to him, isn't an option.", she said, scratching her cheek. "They hold seven in the back and one in the front, so we have to assume we've got eight hostiles to deal with."

Dr. Ceres pressed her lips into a thin line. "Three against eight. You're right, this is suicidal."

"_It isn't if blow their fucking brains out, lady. High ground with a sniper rifle is a helluva force multiplier."_

Miranda crossed her arms, deep in thought. "We've also got surprise in our favor, so...we need a barricade, but one they can't just drive or shoot through…"

Shepard blinked and snapped her fingers as it came to her. "Got it. We fire off a few bursts near the entrance and order everyone outside to create a natural roadblock. Then, we slip in among them, and wait for the mercs to show themselves.", she said, her voice and expression hardening in tandem. "Mercs may be stupid, but most aren't psychotic. They're fighting other PMCs and gangs out there, not civvies." The woman glanced at the pile of bodies around them. "Not intentionally, at least."

Miranda grimaced. "While it is true that not even Aria would order her men to drive through crowds like that…", she said warily. "...it's not the wisest option, Shepard. They'd just scatter in a panic."

"Or tear us apart." Dr. Ceres shook her head. "They're hurt and angry. Never underestimate the power of a riled up mob."

Miranda nodded. "Exactly. Getting them outside, of their own will, is ideal. If we trigger the fire alarms and herd everyone outside, posing as staff, we've got a good chance of pulling this off.", she stated plainly.

Shepard rubbed her temples. "...right, yes. Much better idea. Let's do that.", she said, turning to the good doctor. "Doctor Ceres, I need you to-

"I'm not posing as staff. I actually work here.", interjected Dr. Ceres. She glared at Shepard, her grip tightening on the wheelchair. "I was in surgery for seven hours, and the faces out here haven't changed. I won't abandon them.", she said with a frown. "Take her from my care if you want, but don't you dare just assume I'm coming with you."

"Yes, you are." Shepard's blue-grey eyes grew dark as she set her jaw. "We can't let her die on this station." she said confidently, her tone absolute. The woman flashed her teeth.. "Do you have any fucking idea what'll happen if she does?"

Dr. Ceres bit her lip. "I do.", she whispered, matching Shepard's intensity. "I don't want that to happen, but I've already done my part." The asari doctor tilted her head, glaring at the other woman. "The rest is above my paygrade. None of my fucking concern."

"Wrong. You know who she is.", she said, frowning. Shepard drew her pistol and pressed the barrel against the doctor's head with frightening speed. "You come with, and we've got a fighting chance." She flicked off the safety. "You stay, Aria finds you and we lose everything.", said Shepard, sounding more and more desperate. Her expression became pained, filling with regret. "...please, don't make me do this. You know she'll just fuck it out of you."

The asari doctor was silent for a long moment, staring down the barrel of the gun without so much as a flinch. "...fine.", she growled, bowing her head slightly. "Just do it fast."

"Thank you." Shepard sighed, smiling sadly as the tension melted away. "And we can do that." She holstered her pistol and turned to Miranda, who was now leaning against the wall beside a fire alarm. It worried her that other woman hadn't jumped to defend Dr. Ceres, but Shepard supposed there was time for that later. "Zaeed, ETA?"

"_Fifty seconds. Rooftops and windows are still clear."_

"Miranda, trigger it in ten.", she said to the other woman, who nodded in response. "Guaranteed kills only, Zaeed. We can't give them time to figure out what's happening."

"_Roger that. I've got a good feeling about this plan, and I'm guddamn happy to be a part of it."_

"Of course you are..." Miranda took a deep breath. She pulled the fire alarm, setting off ear shattering sirens throughout the clinic.

-(|)-

Rolan Quarn was nearly crushed by the mercenaries sitting beside him as the Barracuda screeched to a halt. The squad leader lost his footing and fell onto one of the bulky batarians, who quickly shoved the rather angry commander back onto his feet. "Rattik! What the hell are you doing?! Keep driving!", yelled the commander into the radio. Alarms, thankfully from outside of the IFV, roared around them.

"_Sir, that may not be the best idea. About two hundred people just came sprinting out of the clinic. They're panicked, and those sound like fire alarms."_

The squad leader covered his face with his palm. "Did you try the horn?"

"_Not yet." _The horn blared. "_Now they're just screaming at us. They look pretty pissed, sir."_

"Well, then try it again."

The horn blared, again.

"_Nope."_

"Dammit! Pop the hatch and tell them to make a hole! We have to keep moving!"

"_Got it."_

Rolan hummed and looked between the rest of his team. "Well, this is certainly an odd coincidence.", he said, knowing all too well that no such thing existed. Coincidences dropped your guard, and the turian con artist wasn't in the business of looking the fool.

That was a job best left to everyone else.

-(|)-

Shepard smirked as the top hatch of the Barracuda IFV flipped open. The turian driver waved his arms without confidence as he tried to order the huddled mass of injured and sick that blocked the vehicle's path.

The group was packed together so closely that Shepard could feel the breath of eight people on her neck. They all collectively screamed and sobbed at the turian, demanding medical attention and a stop to the madness.

"Hey, alright! Everybody! Can you please just...move aside! HEY! Move along! Nothing to see here! Make a hole! Spirits, we can't exactly drive through you! JUST MOVE!", shouted the turian, his patience vanishing rather quickly.

"FUCK YOU, BIRD!", Shepard screamed back. "IT'S PEOPLE LIKE YOU THAT SENT US HERE IN THE FIRST PLACE!"

Needing no further motivation, the rest of the crowd started hurling insults and rage at the driver. The turian, oddly enough, even tried to meekly apologize to a few of the more explicit remarks.

Shepard made eye contact with Miranda and Dr. Ceres through the crowd. She readied the spectre's weapon and flicked off the safety. "Go.", she whispered into the comm.

The turian's head collapsed as the crack of Zaeed's rifle echoed through the air, spewing grey matter and blue blood across the windshield of the IFV. "_Got 'em."_

Shepard launched herself up and over the crowd with a biotics assisted leap, catching sight of Miranda making a small path to sprint through by 'parting the waters' with two elongated barrier walls below her, and landed just beside the front wheels.

She ran to the back wheels of the Barracuda, just as the rear loading ramp slammed open. Shepard pinned herself to the vehicle, barely out of view. Six heavily armed Blue Suns mercenaries surged out of the IFV, one of them loudly complaining about lazy drivers.

"_Six of 'em. Heavily armed. Machine guns, shotguns, knives, grenades.", _grunted Zaeed, as two rifle shots cracked from the roof. _"__Two less, now. Not gonna chance hitting you when it goes CQC."_

Shepard frowned, thinking quickly. "Four outside, assume one inside.", she grunted in the comm, beginning to radiate a recurring biotic sonar. Six large masses, though, without line of sight, determining their movements and direction wasn't something she could do very quickly. The two dead ones were horizontal to the ground, but that was about all she got.

Before she could issue out a quick plan of attack, one of the mercenaries rounded the corner. "Oh. Hey.", the woman said, scanning his equipment. Shotgun, knives, grenades.

"Uh. Hello?", replied the batarian merc, confused. Halting any chance of a counter attack, Shepard biotically lashed him toward her, spinning him around in the process, and snapped his neck. His body fell to the ground, and the woman heard a steady stream of machine pistol fire from the other side of the IFV.

"_One down.", _said Miranda.

"Same here.", she replied, wrapping herself in a biotic overbarrier. Shepard pivoted out of cover and her instincts, in tandem with her active sonar, kicked in, bringing the slim barrel to bare at the nearest human merc and firing a long burst into her spine. The polonium rounds melted through her heavy armor as she writhed to the ground with a scream.

On the other side of the loading ramp, Miranda kicked out a turian mercenary's legs and sent her flying down the street with a powerful biotic throw. The woman closed her fist, enveloping the merc in surging blue waves, and vaporized the turian in mid-air.

Shepard clipped the spectre's sidearm to her belt and scooped up the fallen human's shotgun. She slapped a fresh thermal clip into it and motioned Miranda toward the loading ramp. The women rounded the corner, weapons raised at the eighth and final mercenary, and were greeted with a very confusing sight.

A barefaced, unarmed turian mercenary, holding his hands above his head.

"You win. I surrender."

-(|)-

Despite his voluntary surrender, Rolan was rather violently thrown out onto the prefabbed street of Gozu. He landed on his stomach, causing yet another dent and scuff on his armor. Lucky for him, that only made it more authentic. "There's no need to be so violent. Though, I suppose you're not the type to appreciate a gentleman.", said the turian con artist, his tone resonating playfully.

The woman with the dark hair tied into a bun, who'd tossed him so effortlessly, rolled her eyes and pinned him to the ground with her foot on his neck. "Shepard, this is clearly a trick. Turians don't surrender. Let's just kill him."

The other woman, presumably Shepard, lowered her weapon. "What? Why?" She said as she knelt down next to him, her expression changing very rapidly. "We're not doing that, Miranda. Not unless he's actually a threat." The woman furrowed her brow at him. "Are you?"

"Not to those such as yourself, no." The turian pulled his mandibles back in a small smile. "All of my weapons are organized, disabled and unloaded inside of the cabin. I didn't fire, nor did I even get up from my seat."

Shepard frowned and stood up. "So you're a coward, then?"

"Not at all. I'd just rather not be associated with the Blue Suns any longer.", he said with a shrug. "Incompetent leadership can be very useful at times, but...I wouldn't say this is one of them, would you?"

The woman half-scoffed, looking a little charmed, if not amused. "No, I suppose I wouldn't."

"Oh, you've got to be fucking kidding me!", groaned a very gruff, grizzled and angry looking man. He stomped over to the downed turian with a scowl. "What kind of turian is a guddamn coward!? I swear to God, Vido is running the Suns into the ground!"

Miranda looked at the man, baffled. "Zaeed, How did you get down here so quickly? I thought your skycar was dead metal."

Zaeed scoffed. "You know, for those of us not born with fucking blue brain magic, rappel lines work stupid well for getting down from high places.", he said gruffly, patting the roll of high tensile strength tether on his belt.

"Calm down." Shepard eyed the man sidelong. "Still, it is a little weird for him to hire a turian who isn't..." She raised a brow, turning back to Rolan. "...very turian. You're not a merc, are you, bird?"

"Not in any sense of the word. Aria showed her hand, and I kept close to those with the most guns. Eventually, they just assumed I was one of them, which was general the idea." Rolan tilted his head. "Standing behind those with the most guns seemed the best plan for survival, but now I'm thinking that you three may be a far better option."

"Fine. He's most likely not a threat.", said Miranda. She scoffed. "We don't have time for this. Why don't we just tie him up, shove him in the back and deal with him later?"

"Good idea." Shepard nodded. "Zaeed, salvage what equipment you can.", she said as she stored her large pack into the cabin. "Doctor Ceres, we're clear. Load the package, double time! We are getting the hell out of here!", the woman barked, presumably over a radio.

The Miranda pulled the turian con artist to his feet, and cocked her head at Zaeed. "Do you mind?"

"Nah, this part's fun." Zaeed laughed and quickly bound Rolan's hands and arms behind his back with the tether. "Alright, in you go dumbass.", he said as she shoved the turian into the back corner of the cabin.

Miranda sat down next to him, crossing her arms with a frown. "You saw what I did to that other turian, correct?"

"Indeed I did."

"You try anything, the same happens to you. Are we clear?", she said, glaring.

Rolan slowly nodded, needing no further convincing that she wasn't one to make threats lightly. "We are."

"Good."

Dr. Ceres quickly pushed a wheelchair bound asari, whose head was encased entirely in gauze and medical tape, around the corner of the IFV. "I concede my previous hesitation. This worked...perfectly." She looked at the turian, shrugged, and then wheeled the asari into the cabin. "Who's driving, by the way?", said the asari doctor as she secured the masked woman to the interior.

"That'd be me." Shepard cocked a brow confidently and biotically lept onto the roof of the Barracuda. "Fair warning, it's a bumpy ride!", she said as she jogged to the front.

"That's really guddamn encouraging!", the man yelled after her. He grumbled as he loaded several machine guns, shotguns, grenades and other pieces of weaponry into the Barracuda. After securing them onto the weapon racks, he sealed the ramp and sat down next to the conscious asari. He was silent for a few moments before looking around curiously. "...anyone else feel like we forgot something?"

-(|)-

Dr. Mordin Solus was, at the same time, incredibly impressed and very much distraught. Shepard's plan of faking a fire to hijack an armored vehicle to escape with their injured friend, likely the asari Aria was looking for: brilliant. Was also very, very stupid. Unnecessary risk.

Perhaps wasn't. As he carried his case of portable instruments through the receding crowd, it became clear that the stakes were higher than he'd thought. Not only that, but she'd had a greybox. Stained with asari blood. Odd. Specific. Significant.

Mordin's mind raced through a thousand possibilities at once, trying to deduce exactly who the asari was. "Targeted, coordinated attack on de facto Terminus figurehead by powerful asari. Expensive, unique equipment. Greybox, belonging to third asari. Not Aria." He shook his head. "...cosmetic damage suggests method of removal resulted in death or coma. Aria called for Hunt, referenced recent events. Not dead, possibly injured."

The good doctor looked up at still raging dog-fighting above him, narrowing his black eyes. "...Nexus Massacre most likely Zaeed's efforts, as injuries associated with massacre match asari's. Also pre-established goal of near-suicidal flight path. Shepard chose not to kill, even after fight, but protect." Mordin blinked several times and picked up his pace to the IFV.

Shepard, who was cleaning turian innards off of the Barracuda's viewport, looked up as she heard him. She frowned, looking very worried. "Mordin, what the hell are you doing out here?"

Mordin cleared his throat. "Unable to save remaining patients with current resources. Can do most good with you. Besides, rest of staff will help those they can."

"As much as I'd like to get that surgery as soon as possible..." Shepard furrowed her brow. "...the right thing to do isn't to just...blindly follow me. I'm not really sure why people are doing that right now, actually..."

"Natural leader, slump into position when vacant. Who you are.", he said, dismissing the topic as less than relevant. "Also, geneticist, not practitioner of internal medicine. Common misconception, often don't bother correcting it."

"Right. I keep forgetting that." She shook her head, embarrassed. "Look, just get in the car before we get shot! I'll explain later!"

"No, no, no! Almost have it!", he replied, almost giddy.

"What?", she blinked, confused. "Almost have what?"

"Morality and background indicates asari is of military, political, nationalist importance, but contradicts past victories. Asari commandos among them. Must be something more. More important..." He grinned directly at Shepard, his eyes snapping open wide. "Asari is citadel agent! Spectre! Protection due to understanding political consequences of asari's death by current context! Exposure of council plot to assassinate Aria incites intragalactic war between Terminus and Citadel! Cost millions, possibly billions of lives! Loose borders! Battle lines drawn by concept of freedom! War of ideologies splits-"

"MORDIN!", screamed Shepard, her head so red with rage it looked like it was about to pop. "SHUT UP AND GET IN THE FUCKING CAR!" She stabbed her index finger at the back of the IFV. "NOW!"

"...should...not have said last part."

-(|)-

Save for Aria and her most trusted lieutenants, Afterlife was completely abandoned. The deep, pounding bass was still present, but without the gaggle of almost permanently aroused asari grinding up against everything, it didn't quite feel like home. The bright neon lights had dimmed, and her custodial staff had long since cleaned up the mess left in the wake of her previous announcement.

They'd all left of their own accord, and Aria wasn't one to make them stay. Her nightclub was still open to the public, even if the heavy mechs and turrets outside turned some of the stupider mercenaries into putty now and then. No one had returned, and the pirate queen was well aware of the reason.

Aria blinked, her cold eyes unwilling to see the dire consequences of her lust for control. A dozen projected vidscreens surrounded her, each playing a live feed of the utter destructive chaos happening all across the station. The property damage was in the millions of credits, mostly aesthetics and dockyards, but the wave of wanton obliteration was slowly encroaching on the life support systems. Casualties were estimated in the tens of thousands so far, but the pirate queen knew it would only grow if she couldn't stop the madness of her own design.

Omega was at war with itself in a thousand different ways. Fighters, gunships and other attack craft swarmed her skies like rachni, creating an impenetrable wall of fire and steel. Every single mercenary, vigilante, paramilitary, and political faction in the terminus weren't just at each other's throats anymore.

They were tearing them out and feeding them to the ever growing sea of red vorcha.

The pirate queen crossed her arms, very unamused at the news she'd just received. "...how exactly did these 'red vorcha' get out of the pits, Bray?", asked Aria, staring at a very battle scarred Bray over the vidcomm. "Those incinerators weren't cheap, so I'm eager to learn as to why you didn't think to use them."

"_We did, actually. Didn't work, since they tore out the heating coils. We set a few on fire, but it only made 'em mate faster."_

"Brilliant. Our primary defense against the regular vorcha is just an aphrodisiac for the red ones." Aria narrowed her eyes. "Should I be worried about this getting out of hand, or will the idiots who keep tearing apart my station eventually sort this out?"

"_I know I'd be worried if the combined volume of an invincible, krogan sized super-vorcha horde was a cubic kilometer, but then again, I'm not in charge._"

"I believe I heard that wrong." The pirate queen blinked. That couldn't be right. "Do you mean that, if we shoved all of them in a box, the box would have to be that large to fit all of them?"

"_Pretty much."_

Aria took a very small breath. "That is indeed a very large problem. Sealing off parts of the station is an ineffective containment strategy, correct?"

"_Yeah. Like I said, they can claw through basically everything that isn't a cruiser."_

"Fine. Anything else?", she asked blithely.

"_They've flooded the lower districts, mostly through your private tunnel system. So that's something we'll have to deal with directly. Gozu, Ikina and Kenzo seem to be hit the hardest. For now, as far as we can tell, they're staying away from Doru and Tuhi."_

"I'm well aware that my bunker and our life support systems have been largely unaffected, Bray.", she said, frowning. "I may still be in Afterlife, but that doesn't make me blind."

"_Ok. Anyway, they're in the tunnels, so they'll probably make their way there eventually. If somebody else doesn't do it first, I guess." _

"Thank you, Bray.", she said snidely. Aria turned away from the vidcomm and back to the devastation spreading across Omega. "I want you, Gavorn and Patriarch to start consolidating what forces you can in order to combat this threat. Your goal is, if you cannot kill them, to draw them towards the idiots tearing apart my station until we can figure out a way to wipe them out."

"_You got it. Stay safe."_

The connection closed, and Aria was left wondering how she was supposed to deal with a super-vorcha infestation when she wasn't even able to placate, or protect, her own peasants. She frowned, pacing around the vidscreens as she soaked in the damage and grew ever angrier.

Living in the Terminus had taught her that playing dirty was the only way to dominate those that were dirtier. That is, until her iron hold on the station had slipped ever so slightly. For a few hours, Omega had thought her dead, so naturally there was a rush to fill the perceived power vacuum. The Hunt was supposed to neutralize that threat by focusing their collective blood lust on a single target.

It was one of the dirtiest plays she could make, and it didn't work. In fact, it had only made things worse. All she'd really done was order a bunch of krogan to stomp out a varren after she'd locked them in her basement. They'd just fight each other, because they didn't care. Hopefully, at the very least, that asari, who had most likely killed Shepard and Zaeed by now, would be caught in the crossfire.

Aria grunted, sat down on her couch and continued to watch her once beautiful station destroy itself. "Has anyone responded to the cease fires we've sent out, Grizz?", she asked the turian, who was overseeing the team of techs as they organized as much strategic data as they could.

"Which one?", he asked grimly, his mandibles tightening onto his cheeks.

Aria clenched her teeth. "All seven of them."

"Besides the usual 'fuck off' and 'fuck you', no, no one has responded."

"What about the teams I deployed to protect the residential districts?", she asked more hopefully. If any of the dozens of plans she'd set into motion over the past few hours had a chance of succeeding, it was that one.

Grizz looked at a few datapads and grumbled. "...Teams two through seven are now literal heads on pikes, thanks to Jona Sederis. The rest have not checked in." He handed her a datapad with a picture of the asari in question holding up a very freshly severed salarian head on a pike. 'Greetings from Omega!' was written in bright bold letters above her.

"It...certainly sends a message. I have no idea what that message is, but it's...sending me one.", she said, raising a brow. "The founder of Eclipse is as powerful a biotic as she is clinically insane, and every day she loses her mind a little bit more. " Aria tossed the datapad onto the couch and glared at the turian. "I have seen her crush a freighter while drowning in biotic suppressants. I didn't know she was here, and at the moment I don't care how that slipped the net. She's the single largest threat to this station outside of the red vorcha, so we need her taken out. Contact the Blue Suns, and tell them I want to speak to Vido personally."

Grizz nodded, and in less than a minute, Vido's permanently five-o-clock shadowed mug was plastered over the vidcomm. He was scowling, as he often did. "_So the great and powerful Aria desires help from the Blue Suns. Didn't you hear we own a third of Omega now? We don't need to listen to you anymore! Tell me, why should I_-"

Aria rolled her eyes. "Shut up. You went from a fifth to a third and can do basic math. Good for you. How much for Jona Sederis's head?"

"_Depends. Dead or alive?_", replied Vido, all of his macho boasting melting away in an instant. The man was a coward, and most knew it.

"Dead, you idiot.", growled the pirate queen. "I said her head, not her entire body bound, gagged, covered in elasa and dropped on my doorstep by a pair of monster-cocked krogan and their pet transgender human male like some sort of confusing sexual fantasy!"

Vido stared in shock, his skin turning pale. "_...how the hell did you know-_"

Aria grew a demonic grin and lowered her voice. "I fucked it out of one of your lovers. What was her name? Jentha?", she teased as she leaned back on the couch and castled her fingers. "Now, let's talk price. If I don't like it, I may just release a few of those wonderful facts about you to the public."

"_Ten thousand!_", spat Vido.

Aria yawned and waved Grizz over. "Grizz, be a dear and send a comm burst to everyone on the station detailing all of Vido's shortcomings, mistakes and secrets, would you?"

"_No! Okay, free! I'll do it for free!_", panicked Vido, his entire head now drenched in flop sweat.

"Deal. Let me know when it's done." Aria closed the link and smirked to herself. She may have lost control on an administrative level, but she was still the queen on every other.

-(|)-

Shepard grumbled and ignited the Barracuda's engine, the thirty ton war machine roaring to life. Her hands flew over the haptic controls, switching them out for manual controls. The orange displays vanished as the conventional wheel, command buttons, and pedals slid into place. She adjusted each part to fit her stature and swept her palms over of wheel thoughtfully.

Manual controls made driving feel natural, as if the vehicle was an extension of her body. A fourth leg, as biotics had long been her third.

"Last call! Everyone secure?", she barked through the IFV's internal comm. Mordin's abrupt outburst at everything she was trying so desperately to hide from Aria had trashed her mood, denying her the opportunity to savor the small victory they'd had by stealing the Barracuda.

If he wasn't going out of his way to save her life, she'd punch him in the head.

"_We're fine. Go.",_ replied Dr. Ceres.

"_Yes! Keep moving! Can't risk more exposure to gangs and mercenaries. Need to stay hidden. Safe. Zaeed a bad model for vehicle operation!", _interjected Mordin, somehow talking even faster than normal.

"_Oh, shut up.", _grumbled Zaeed. "_I swear, you cause one big accident and suddenly it's the only thing you've ever done."_

Miranda sighed so loudly that Shepard was surprised she could hear it. _"__It was only eight hours ago, not five years. The memory is still very fresh."_

The woman scowled and locked the loading ramp into place, and slammed her foot onto the accelerator. The Barracuda roared as it rolled forward across the long, debris ridden streets of Gozu. It was much slower than she remembered and, as she struggled to dodge the upper half of a crashing gunship, realized that it was handling even worse than a cinderblock.

"Zaeed, deal with it, and take control of the turret. Fire on anything too fast for us to outrun.", she said as she scanned the dashboard for something to fix the IFV's lack of gusto. Shepard shot the switch labeled 'Six-Wheel Drive' a hard look and flipped it. "...why would anyone disable that...?", she wondered aloud in a whisper.

The big red button next to it had no label at all, but Shepard remembered exactly what it did. She'd never gotten the chance to use it, as it was a serious danger to everyone on board, and part of her still resented her instructors for drilling the potential consequences into her brain all those years ago. The woman actually had to slap her hand away from pressing it, which didn't surprise her in the least.

The Barracuda clacked loudly, the control system switching over, and the woman instantly felt the difference. Shepard felt like she could jump bridges, weave in and out of rockets, and smash her way through an apartment building all at once.

"_Got it. How fast can these go, anyway?", _asked Zaeed.

Shepard banked the Barracuda around a corner, weaving in and out of debris with grace and skill one wouldn't normally associate with armored vehicles. She smirked, rather enjoying this small bit of physical isolation from the hodgepodge of misfits she'd managed to manifest over the past ten hours. "Not sure, Zaeed. Last time I drove one of these things, I think I got it up to 150 kilometers an hour. I was running from a carpet bombing at the time, so I wasn't paying too close attention to the speed.", she chuckled.

"_As impressive an anecdote as that is, Shepard, I'm sending you a navpoint.", _directed Miranda. "_My skycar is just a block away from our position, and I keep a cache of rather...important equipment in it's trunk."_

"The fuck do I look like, a taxi driver?", Shepard growled, smashing the front of the Barracuda through an abandoned gang checkpoint. Jury-rigged walls of thin metal sheets split open to make way for the IFV's raging bulk. "We don't have time for that."

All six tires rolled over and crushed a line of dead skycars once used as a barricade before utterly flattening a pair of toll booths. Some of Omega's gangs were remarkably well organized, it seemed.

"_It's the jet black skycar one hundred meters in front of you. It has gold accents, and...here, let me flicker the lights..."_

"Oh. I see it." Shepard slowed the Barracuda as a jet black skycar, one among many in a very large parking lot, did indeed flicker its lights. "...guess we do have time for it, huh." She checked the sensors and shrugged as the radar and ladar scans came up clean. "Zaeed, I've got nothing on instruments. You see anything?" The woman pushed the vehicle forward, driving over row after row of skycars toward Miranda's own.

"_Not a guddamn thing, Shepard. It's a ghost town down here. Up there, though, is still one big clusterfuck."_

"We don't have to worry about them, for the moment. As long as nobody fires a signal flare or-"

The Barracuda rolled over the front bumper of an older model skycar, activating it's anti-theft alarm. The blaring, panicked siren echoed off into the distance, which set off a slew of other car alarms both several blocks away and in the parking lot.

Shepard seethed, her hands gripping the wheel so hard that it audibly strained to keep its shape. "Miranda, get out, grab your crap, and get your ass back here! Now!", she said as she dropped the ramp. "What kind of an idiot gets a car alarm installed on Omega?!" She slammed her forehead against the wheel, unintentionally sounding the horn.

"_If I had to hazard a guess...a very wealthy idiot, I'd say.",_ replied the snarky turian.

"You, bird, the fuck's your name?", Shepard snapped back.

"_Rolan Quarn. And yours?"_

"Rolan Quarn, my name is Karen Gwendolyn Shepard and if you don't keep your mouth shut..."

-(|)-

"_...I'M GOING TO TEAR OUT YOUR THROAT WITH MY TEETH AND SHIT DOWN YOUR NECK!", _screamed Shepard, her anger reverberating through the Barracuda's internal speakers. "_I HAVE ZERO PATIENCE FOR BULLSHIT TODAY!"_

Miranda bolted out of the IFV and toward her car, scrambling over the wreckage and burning debris that littered the area. She passed a squad of dead mercenaries, their faceplates shattered inward, but didn't pay them any mind. They were dead, and she was busy.

Her skycar was, sadly, riddled with bullet holes and covered in its own shattered glass. The roof was caved in, and Miranda winced at the prospect of having to file an insurance claim for the damage. She could justify 'Act of God', but then she'd be playing right into Aria's hand.

Mercifully, the trunk was the one part of her skycar that seemed relatively intact. She popped it open and waved her omni-tool over the seemingly empty compartment. The floor slid back, revealing an expensive suit of black, white and gold armor. Two orange bisected hexagons, the larger parallel over the other, adorned the right breast and helmet. Beside it was a weapon rack filled with machine pistols, a few prototype assault rifles, disk grenades, along with a slew of other useful gadgets and tools.

"_Be advised, I'm picking up...what the...seismic activity?"_, relayed Shepard._ "__That can't be right. It looks like a rapid series of 1.3 earthquakes, because apparently the Richter scale still applies to Omega. Seriously, how old is this?_"

"That's impossible.", said Miranda as she reached out with her biotics. Her armor glowed with a faint blue haze, and very rapidly assembling itself on to her body with perfect, practiced precision. It hissed as the environmental seal locked into place, her helmet's situational awareness package quickly coming online as well. "We're on a space station built out of an asteroid. There aren't any active fault lines, nor could there be."

"_It's probably a broken sensor, Shepard. You just drove over a few dozen skycars, so that's most likely the reason.",_ insisted Dr. Ceres. "_I've lived here for fifty years, and not once have I heard of, or felt, anything resembling an earthquake."_

"_Could be...high explosives. Not too far below surface. Mining charges. Possibly breaching blast doors. Bunkers, reactors, many places of great importance! Hermatic seals powerful, not invincible!", _rebutted Mordin.

"_Hold up. I'm getting a similar frequency of tremors, but now it's at a...2.5? Miranda, you feel anything?"_

Miranda surveyed her equipment for damage, and was faintly aware of a small disturbance in the ground. "Just barely. I might've missed it if you hadn't asked."

"_Not a broken sensor, then. Huh."_

Mordin made an 'ah' sound. "_Recall rachni attack patterns. Very similar. Light tremors, then larger. Grow until sinkholes, landslides, breaches in earth. Then, swarm from below. Proved effective even against krogan. Can shoot up, not down."_

"_Rachni? The...bug things that nearly wiped out the galaxy? Pretty sure they've been extinct for around two thousand years.", _said Shepard, clearly trying to convince herself it was true. Miranda knew better, but it wasn't her place to say.

"_Most likely, though unproven. Margin of error. Extinction of sapient race long, difficult process. Krogan impatient by nature, may have cut corners."_

"_That's ridiculous. Doctor Solus, I can't imagine they'd turn their backs on the greatest enemy they'd ever known due to poor work ethic.", _said Dr. Ceres. "_Much of krogan ideology was, and still is, simplistic and tribal in nature. An enemy must be vanquished to prove one's superiority, not out of honor or self-defense. Both turians and asari shared a similar mentality in their early cultural development, but what's most interesting, considering the turians are their homeworld's apex predator and the krogan were very much prey, is that both of them came to nearly the same conclusion regarding warfare.", _she wondered aloud. "_On the other hand, the asari learned to talk."_

"_Wow. That was...both very informative and slightly racist.", _Shepard said, clearing her throat. "_...are you sure you're a surgeon?", _she asked, her inflection betraying her anxiety.

"_Positive. I wasn't always, obviously. Nobody is one thing for their entire lives." _

"_Unaware you dabbled in phsycological xeno-anthropology before founding clinic. Would like to hear more, after current situation dealt with of course.", _said Mordin, surprised.

"Yes, by all means have an academic discussion about nature versus nurture. Perfect use of our time." Miranda locked the assault rifles, machine pistols, thermal clips, and grenades onto her armor's hard points. The combined weight was far heavier than she was used to, but it wasn't anything she couldn't handle. As she moved to secure the rest of her equipment, she felt another flurry of quakes, this one slightly rattling the metal frame of the skycars around her. "...alright, I definitely felt that one."

"_3.5, that time. Look, Doctor Ceres is interesting. We get it. Whatever's going on, it's not rachni, but if it was, how do we...prepare against sinkholes, Mordin?"_

"_Difficult to counter. Would need flamethrowers, landmines. Again, high explosives useful. Biotics, possibly, if area of effect large enough."_

"_...so all the guddamn stuff we've been saving for when shit's hit the fan? Lucky us, not carrying a fucking armory on our backs."_

"Whatever it is, it's not our problem.", said Miranda. She sealed the reinforced briefcase that held the rest of her tech, essentially everything that wasn't designed as a weapon, and hauled it back toward the Barracuda. "On my way back."

"_Acknowledged.", _replied Shepard. "_We've still got some ways to go, so everyone stay alert. No telling what we'll-"_

Just then, a series of rampant tremors shook the ground, causing Miranda lose her footing. She fell on her side, tightening her grip on the briefcase. A few dilapidated buildings, no doubt collateral damage from the chaotic gang war, lost half of their walls as they fell onto the street, kicking up dust and debris. Stacked skycars tipped over and collapsed, ironically crushing one another into a different kind of pile up.

"_Shit, that was a 6.1! Miranda, we are leaving!", _said Shepard, raising her voice. "_Right now!_

"Thirty seconds!", grunted Miranda as she scrambled to her feet, her mind racing as to what, besides the rachni, could possibly cause such a powerful tremor. A frigate's drive core exploding, but that was hard to miss. Small kinetic impactors, but they'd certainly hear those as well as feel them. High explosives, sure, but the sheer volume would sever the district from the station itself.

The tremors, the shattered face plates and windows, Mordin's reference to swarm attack patterns. It all clicked into place.

"RED VORCHA!", she yelled, her words laced with fear. The recordings Zaeed had sent to her, Shepard and Dr. Ceres were more than enough to impart the horrific threat they posed. Only ten meters from the Barracuda. She could make it, and then they'd drive off before getting overrun. It'd be close, but they'd escape.

"_Oh, you've got to be shitting me!", _roared Zaeed.

"_Fuck, I think she's right!", _snapped Shepard._ "__Sensors picking up one, no two hundred plus contacts, all around us! Goddamnit, I'm gunning it! I knew we shouldn't have stopped!"_

"I'm almost-" Another quake sent her tumbling to the ground, falling flat on her stomach as she lost her hold on the briefcase. It slid across the street, which cracked and splintered as a tiny, high pitched shriek slipped through the floor.

Miranda's deep blue eyes widened in terror as she felt her faceplate warble. She rolled onto her back and frantically twisted her helmet off, just as the reinforced glass shattered inward. Shards ricocheted off of the interior and sliced through the length of her left cheek. Several streams of blood seeped down her face from the long, shallow wounds as she yelped in pain.

The IFV was already pulling away, its ramp sealed tight.

She tossed the helmet away and, despite feeling as though she'd just been stabbed in the face, forced herself onto her feet. Miranda snatched up the briefcase and froze as she saw the prefabbed floor collapse just in front of the Barracuda.

"_Crap crap crap crap crap SHIT!"_

It veered out of the way, only to have more patches of crumbling ground block its escape. The armored vehicle was thrown into a hard turn and roared back towards Miranda. The IFV came to a screeching stop just beside her as she felt opposite end of the parking lot fall below the surface. The floor continued to collapse in a large circle around them, sealing them in with just enough room to maneuver.

Miranda had fallen prey to the same tragic misconception that the salarians had made over two thousand years prior. She assumed monsters were nothing more than animals, and could not have been more wrong.

They were being taunted and challenged by a superior force of both numbers and strength. Boxed in, with no hope of escape or back up, and the bastards seemed aware of it. No, they were aware of it. They understood the situation completely, and wanted to play with their food.

As the red vorcha swarmed through the breach around them, their shriek becoming deafening, Miranda accepted the cruel irony of her fate. "...those who refuse to learn history are doomed to repeat it...", she whispered, realizing that humanity truly wasn't that different from anyone else. Cerberus was wrong. They weren't special or-

The ear shattering boom of Barracuda's cannon ended her train of thought, the high explosive round turning a clump of the monsters into nothing more than scattered limbs. It spun around, spraying the less effective coaxial machine gun at the advancing horde as it sounded off with its main gun in tandem, blasting holes in their line from every direction.

Before she could even begin to remember what she was thinking of, Shepard vaulted out of the top hatch, her body surging with arcs of sharp blue, and violently swiped the air in front of her. A dozen vorcha were engulfed in a wide area warp field, their bodies very quickly beginning to fall apart. With a grunt, the woman closed her outstretched hand into a fist, blowing the afflicted vorcha to hell and wounding several others.

In the span of five seconds, Shepard and Zaeed had managed to kill twenty of these seemingly invincible monsters. "Shepard, catch!", said Miranda, tossing the other woman one of her prototype assault rifles.

Shepard caught it, sighted it and gathered more dark energy. "Thanks for the weird looking Mattock. Explain your armor and face later.", she growled as she lifted a cluster of vorcha into the air, crushed them together, and slammed them back into the ground in a burst of blue light. "Don't just stand there! Keep them at range, dammit!"

"Right!" Miranda hurled ten of them back into the breach with a wide-area throw, and whipped a few not-exactly-legal-in-Citadel-space acid disk grenades into the advancing horde, instantly melting the legs of those that were caught in the blast into goop.

As more and more of them went down by their combined efforts, even though their numbers didn't seem to be thinning, Miranda felt a hint of pride as a stray thought entered her mind.

The krogan weren't the only ones good at killing giants monsters.

-(|)-

Jona Sederis was thriving. Where the weak and pitiful of Omega were neck deep in their own piss, the founder of Eclipse was intoxicated by the chaotic power struggle erupting around her. Everyone was desperately reaching for dominance, as if they had any chance of succeeding. A sense of righteous duty had slithered down the throats of those who grasped for the throne, and it was that self-perpetuating mandate that amused Sederis to no end.

"We're freeing Omega from Aria!", she'd heard many say. As a rebuttal, she'd melted their throats. While the best diplomats could debate without speech, even they knew that bleeding profusely was a juvenile argument against their own murder.

Other had beckoned "The Suns will rule the Terminus!". Sederis had thought that adorable, and shredded their optic nerves as a show of brutal irony. She was the only one laughing, but entertaining one's self through humor was the purest form of it. If others enjoyed it, that was merely a bonus.

Sederis's favorite moronic boast was that "The Terminus will rise!". The asari hadn't a single idea as to what that even meant, but the more often she'd heard it, the more it piqued her curiosity. Hopefully, the Blood Pack battlemaster she'd been repeatedly beating to regen-death would have answers for her.

The brutal asari slammed her boot down onto the krogan's crest, the natural armor that had hardened over countless centuries splintering loudly. He roared and charged to tackle the woman, only for her to pivot out of the way and smash his now wounded head into a wall covered in dried. splattered blood of all races. The krogan's nerve fluid splashed against the bulkhead, adding pale yellow to the morbid canvas of stains. He slumped to the ground, growling and broken.

"What the fuck do you want from me?!", roared the battlemaster.

Sederis smirked and bent down over him, her pale yellow form fitting armor mirroring the wall's color pallet. The deep batarian red acted as her warpaint, its strong presence balanced by the intimidating indigo of her own kind. Turian blue traced her throat, and her grin only made it more menacing. "Information. Entertainment. Stimulation. Euphoria is a glorious state of mind, whelp.", she spat, flashing her teeth as she used his own kind's insults against him. "And you are going to help me stay there."

The krogan eyed her, both enraged and confused. "I have no fucking idea what that means."

Sederis laughed once, and her white eyes began to glow fiercely. "So, I shall clarify." The battlemaster was encased in a series of localized stasis fields around each limb, lifted a few feet off the ground, and crushed against the wall. "Your krannt, whose crests will be forged into blades, all spoke a very specific and intriguing phrase." The krogan's limbs were stretched outward just enough for his armor and layered skin to tear. He yelped, pitifully and in agony, and she didn't care. "'The Terminus will Rise'. Clarify. As I have done for you, so you shall do for me."

"It's...just talk!", growled the krogan, avoiding the sight of his arms and legs slowly being torn off at their base. "It means nothing! We've been saying stupid shit like that for centuries!"

Sederis slowly rose to her feet and inspected the krogan's arms that were barely hanging by a thread, her white eyes still glowing with calculated fury. "I'm well aware of your incessant boasting and pack mentality, whelp. That is Omega, as it is the Terminus and even the Citadel. All suffer from such weakness. This, however, is ideology.", she stated calmly, dragging her index finger across the krogan's wingspan. "One is baseless, while the other has deep, tangled and enduring roots. It is a weed that cannot simply be burned, for it will only grow back" The asari violently grasped part of the krogan's soft, unarmored throat. "Where are the roots? Who is propagating this suicidal belief? That this community of brooding exiles and pitiful drecks can become more than they are?"

The krogan roared, writhing in blinding agony as his limbs continued to separate from his body. "I HEARD IT FROM THE MAD PROPHET! YOU DIDN'T NEED TO TORTURE ME FOR THIS!"

"As I said, euphoria is a glorious state of mind, and your role in this life is keep me there.", she said as she placed her palm on the side of his armored neck. "Interesting. The batarian, whose outbound frequency is the only one not being jammed? Those are very deep roots." The brutal asari twisted the patch of his throat very slightly and smiled warmly. "Now, in order to truly impart the brutal purity that is Eclipse onto our newest members...", beckoned Sederis, lightly gesturing to the six or so dozen terrified recruits that had been watching the interrogation. "...your death will be spectacular, and we will feel it as one."

Sederis turned her eyes black as night and flashed her teeth. "Embrace the void, or be blinded by the sun.", she whispered, initiating the meld. Her mind was filled with his terror, rage and pain, while his was filled with her exhilaration, violence, and joy. The woman was forcing him to him to experience both sides of his own death, as she did the same.

The brutal asari slammed her jaw down onto the krogan's fleshy throat, gripped the side of his armored neck in a vice, and gnashed her teeth deep into the meat like a feral varren. She jerked her head back and brutally tore out his throat, pouring nerve fluid and blood across her and the recruits. Many vomited, and others ran to certain death. Sederis quickly burdened those that fled with biotically shattered legs, having evolved past the need for physical mnemonics long ago.

Even as life rapidly drained from the krogan, Sederis strengthened the meld, forcing his last moments and thoughts to be of her own design. Tuchanka, bright and green. He had a family now. A mate, a dozen children. He was happy, and his eldest son had been born a biotic. As a father, he could not have been more proud. The krogan had sent her all of his rage, pain and begrudging gratitude for such a vivid memory. Even in death, Sederis was in total control.

As Sederis came out of the joining, her collection of stolen memories growing ever larger, she released the krogan's lifeless body from her hold and it fell to the ground in a heap. She turned around and stared hard at the recruits, crushing the krogan's throat as she balled her hand into a fist. "As all of you can see quite clearly, I, and my organization, will not tolerate mercy, pity or any such weakness we deem detrimental to Eclipse."

She walked through the crowd, the horrified masses giving her a wide berth on instinct alone. "Eclipse is brutality. Eclipse is power, overwhelming and insurmountable. We cannot be ignored, for we will darken the stars themselves simply to terrify those that feed on the light!", bellowed Sederis, her booming voice becoming more passionate with every word.

The brutal asari stopped just before their Ikina District FOB's large, impromptu landing pad, the still burning chaos of the battlefield coming back into view. So far, securing the Ikina district had gone over relatively well. Besides a few holdouts, Eclipse had gained total control of the district, and many of her people were celebrating that as a victory. For children, yes, but not for Sederis. Her prize, and thus theirs, was far grander.

They needed a reminder, lest they weaken.

Sederis turned back to the terrified masses with a harsh glare. She opened up the comm channel she used for organization-wide announcements and gritted her teeth. "Eclipse, today, you have fought valiantly. As a result, many of you are now under the tantalizing misconception that we have won whatever tiny, meaningless trifle of this station, and that it is now our own!", she snarled.

"We have conquered, yes, but we did not win. Our battle today was not a victory. Political power, land, resources, spoils, dominance...these are not our goals, nor true goals in any sense. They are constructs created by those who fear what we can, and will, become! Just as you are powerless to stop the setting of the sun, so too will all be against Eclipse!", roared Sederis, her speech bordering on tyrannical charisma.

The crowd, and everyone on the comm channel, responded with loud, cultist cheering.

Sederis grinned and walked up the loading ramp of her Mantis gunship. She gripped one of the bars attached to the passenger door and leaned out of the craft. "We have no creed, nor allegiance to any sovereign body! Our power blinds them, so that we may live as we see fit! Freedom from any and all who might oppress us! WE ARE A FORCE OF NATURE! GODDESSES AMONG MORTALS!". The brutal asari motioned for the pilot to take off, and not a moment later the A-61 roared to life, its thrusters swatting debris away like paper. "WHO BINDS US?!", she asked, raising her fist into the air as the gunship did the same.

"NONE!"

"WHO OBEYS US!?"

"_NONE!_", screamed her people as the Mantis soared far from the crowd.

"WHO FEARS US?!" The brown murky cityscape of Omega was became more and more dull every time she looked at it. The burning buildings and fallen frigates were a beautiful touch, but still it wasn't enough to hold her attention for very long. Still, the mantra needed reinforcement, so she endured.

"_ALL!_"

"WHO ARE WE?!"

"_ECLIPSE!_"

Sederis hummed as she closed the channel, content with the progress she'd made in just few short weeks on this station. She'd whipped the entire Omega section of Eclipse back into her state of mind, as, through no fault of his own, Jaroth had imparted his less than absolute sensibilities to her followers. It was not a mistake he'd made lightly, and she'd understood. The death of his brother simply made failure less of an option for him. He had no close family but his dalatrass, now.

The brutal asari opened a link to Jaroth, her white eyes glaring down at the station below with contempt. "Jaroth, get me a location on the Mad Prophet's broadcast center. He's a rallying cry, and we need to neutralize him."

"_I'll get the techs on it, though we've already been trying to figure that out for months. Anything else, ma'am?"_

Sederis opened her hand and stared thoughtfully at her piece of the krogan's throat. "Begin investigating these red vorcha I keep hearing about. The descriptions I've heard are..." The brutal asari tossed the bloody patch of flesh out of the gunship and sealed the doors behind her. "...worrisome."

-(|)-

"NORTH SIDE! CONCENTRATE FIRE!", screamed Shepard as she unloaded the rest of her assault rifle's thermal clip. The heavy, explosive tungsten ammo block sent streams of armor piercing rounds into the eternally advancing vorcha horde. Volley after volley burrowed beneath their flesh and detonating a moment later, splattering limbs and meat in every direction.

"Got it!" Miranda turned, her movements now sluggish, and did the same, slowing down yet another push for the IFV. Her hair was thick with sweat, and the long gashes on her cheek were scabbed three times over. "Zaeed, for God's sake will you just take down that building already?!"

"_You're asking me to make on the fly demolitions calculations with a cannon I've never used before on a blown apart apartment building I've never laid eyes on!", _rebutted Zaeed. "_WHY DON'T YOU CLIMB DOWN OUT OF MY ASS FOR ONE GUDDAMN SECOND SO I CAN MAKE SURE I DON'T CRUSH US INSTEAD OF PLUGGING UP THESE FUCKING HOLES!?"_

Dr. Ceres, who'd to her credit had actually picked up a rifle and started shooting after escape became complicated, biotically hurled another line of vorcha back into the breach. She fought with such trained efficiency that Shepard was positive she'd been a huntress earlier in life. "Zaeed, just breathe and focus. Miranda clearly doesn't appreciate how delicate a procedure this is."

"Are you kidding? He's trying to shove a rectangle into a round hole!", grumbled Miranda.

Shepard, despite this being a very deadly situation, had to laugh at that. "Zaeed, you ever play with blocks as a kid?", she snickered as she blasted apart a few more vorcha with her salvaged AT-12 Raider, the dual rapid-fire shots of explosive flechette ripping through them like butter.

"_You think you're real clever, don't you?"_

"Yup_._"

With a moat of red vorcha around them and an IFV that, unlike its younger brother, couldn't jump, their odds of survival had been approximately zero. No clear routes of escape existed, and they were trapped in no man's land. While it was true that they had cover in the form of a parking lot filled with skycars, it didn't amount to anything in the face of the red vorcha. They could just tear through it like it was paper, and they weren't exactly shooting back.

In the midst of the chaos, Zaeed had realized that by blowing up a building just right, he could collapse the debris into the chasm and make a jury-rigged bridge.

"_Okay, got it! Once I hit it, it's gonna be thirty seconds before we can fuck off, so ready up!" _A synchronized timer popped up on her omni-tool. "_We're on the clock!"_

"Alright, this is it! Everyone pile in, and start praying!" Shepard tensed her jaw and tossed the rest of her grenades into the advancing horde, turning a cluster to meat. "Zaeed, fire!".

"_Guddamn right!" _The Barracuda's main gun boomed, launching an anti-tank round into the last remaining support beam of a six-story building across the moat. It creaked, shuddered and began to fall completely apart in the direction of the chasm. "_Beautiful shot! _

Twenty-five seconds.

Shepard launching herself into biotic charge toward the IFV. The woman arrived just above the Barracuda's top hatch, kicked it open, fell into the driver's seat and sealed the door behind her. She quickly shoved her shotgun and rifle to the side and disabled the engine safeties. If they were going to make it out of this, she needed to redline it.

Seventeen seconds.

Her eyes flicked toward the internal camera feed, and was relieved to see everyone had made it back inside. "Keep the ramp open and fire on the bastards! They'll chase after us!" Shepard slammed her foot onto the pedal. The Barracuda's six wheels dug into the scarred metal road and roared forward, picking up as much speed as it could.

Ten seconds.

Shepard felt the vehicle roar with speed, as if it was just as desperate to escape as the rest of them. Suddenly, as her head finally grasped the image of that massive building coming down directly in front of her, she realized that this was by far one of the stupidest things she'd ever done.

"_Shepard, you're cutting this a little close!", _yelled Zaeed over the stream of automatic gunfire coming from the passenger cabin. "_Christ, never mind! These fuckers are stupid fast! Gun it!"_

Six seconds.

"I've got this!", she snapped back, once again eyeing that red button she'd never once gotten to press. Her instructors had told her, time and time again, that the big red button was only to be used in the most dire of emergencies, since it could endanger the lives of everyone on board. Ironically, that carpet bombing she was running from all those years ago was the one day that it didn't work.

Two seconds.

"...fuck you, Anderson." Shepard pressed the button.

Zero.

Just as the building crashed down into the pits, the Barracuda's rear jets screamed to life, giving it a massive burst of speed. It's chassis rattled and shook, as it strained to maintain its stability from the boost. The IFV smashed through the debris, barreling over the makeshift bridge and onward to freedom.

All of them whooped, save for Vasir who hadn't been the most receptive lately, as loud as they possibly could, and Shepard had to refrain from beeping the horn a few thousand times. Relief washed over her, and surely the others as well. Clocking in at 200 kilometers an hour, the rear jets extinguished themselves, and the Barracuda continued to speed away from their potential grave.

"_I just want to point out that all of my plans have worked so far. Y'know, for the record. Collateral damage doesn't seem so guddamn stupid now, does it?", _chuckled Zaeed.

"Counterpoint.", said Shepard, feeling very playful as she'd just cheated death. "Ignoring you by listening to the radio.". She flipped it on, only to be, once again, greeted by the broadcast of the Mad Prophet. "Oh, for the love of..."

"_There are lines being drawn, brothers and sisters! Legions shall join the free! Exiles of all creeds! Even those who bow to the eyes and ears of the heartless bastions will shatter their bonds and join us in our new, beautiful world! The slow, feeble, young, dying, zealotus, neutered, and cursed peoples will shout in one voice that we are not to be ignored! All are one-"_

"You know what?" Shepard flipped it off and focused on driving. "No radio. Zaeed, let's discuss it when we get back, ok?"

"_Fair enough."_

"_Might I inquire where it is we're going, exactly?", _asked Rolan.

"...somewhere safe."

-(|)-

**A/N: The M-080 Barracuda gets rear jets because, ironically, it can't jump.**

**Anyone here play Left 4 Dead? Totally unrelated. Probably.**

**Sound waves shattering reinforced military polymers? Impossible, I think, but I'm invoking 'Rule of Cool' and 'Chekov's Gun', so now it's legit.**

**Jona Sederis was already that crazy, let's be honest. I just...let her off the leash, so to speak. If anyone tells you Eclipse was founded after the Suns, think about that. Isn't that just...weird? PMCs would be around for CENTURIES at this point, especially the good ones. **

**Rolan Quarn, ladies and gentleman! For those who don't recall, he was in the Citadel DLC, and had an arc during the Cerberus News Network's run.**

**Zealotus is actually a real word. Surprised me, too.**

**I am 3 for 3 on sort-of-Mitch Hurwitz/Dan Harmon-level clever chapter titles. If you know who the second guy is: #SixSeasonsandaMovie :)**

**Feel free to drop a review right below in that box. Even if it's scathing hate or like two words, I'd love to read it.**


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